Been a great ride

[Fire1981]

How much does one cost 🔥

[Fire1981]

Size 7🔥

[William]

Pretty sure the helmets are with Rawlings/ MLB exclusively. I am not aware of any dealings at the retail or even the collegiate levels. As the game of baseball advanced, with more pitchers throwing harder, faster pitches, injuries were on the rise. That's when we developed these batting helmets not to many years ago. 

It's literally amazing the amount of force these helmets can absorb. As the game has evolved, it's more commonplace to see pitchers hitting 103-105 mph fastballs. A handful can exceed that. The helmet can handle it.

[William]

Just now, William said:

Pretty sure the helmets are with Rawlings/ MLB exclusively. I am not aware of any dealings at the retail or even the collegiate levels. As the game of baseball advanced, with more pitchers throwing harder, faster pitches, injuries were on the rise. That's when we developed these batting helmets not to many years ago. 

It's literally amazing the amount of force these helmets can absorb. As the game has evolved, it's more commonplace to see pitchers hitting 103-105 mph fastballs. A handful can exceed that. The helmet can handle it.

You know, while I'm thinking about it, I've always wondered if we could have came up with something for the NFL. So many concussions in recent years. Great job on their recently incorporated concussion protocol that's in place. But, I have still watched games where there have been bad calls made regarding contact between players. The players in question remained in the game instead of being removed. 

It would have been another challenge to come up with a prototype too compete with Riddell. I think Miken could have gave them a run for their money regarding helmet design!

[William]

More fun helmet stuff...my buddy Dean cutting the air vent holes with a dremel, then sanding off the excess flak, while shaping it, on a sanding belt. Finally, we sand by hand all the rough edges inside the air vent holes and hit the edges with a 400 grit buffer before they get sent to shipping. Man, this stuff is fun! Going to miss it!

[schmoozer]

If they move bat production to China, where is the wood going to come from?

will the Trump tariffs impact the business?

hang in there William, I don’t think the fat lady is quite ready to sing…

[William]

11 hours ago, schmoozer said:

If they move bat production to China, where is the wood going to come from?

will the Trump tariffs impact the business?

hang in there William, I don’t think the fat lady is quite ready to sing…

Actually I'm not sure how they are going to handle the production part of it as far as the base material is concerned. Our bats are composite, which yes, does have wood in the "mix". 

Here at the facility, we have this huge conveyor type machine that is fed with composite "strands, " that come off of small spools, I mean dozens of them simultaneously. They are all fed together into this machine, being mixed with resin and pressed together into a continuous sheet of composite material. It's then wrapped around a cardboard roll at the other end, then frozen. We pull these big rolls from the freezer for bat production.

[William]

Just now, William said:

Actually I'm not sure how they are going to handle the production part of it as far as the base material is concerned. Our bats are composite, which yes, does have wood in the "mix". 

Here at the facility, we have this huge conveyor type machine that is fed with composite "strands, " that come off of small spools, I mean dozens of them simultaneously. They are all fed together into this machine, being mixed with resin and pressed together into a continuous sheet of composite material. It's then wrapped around a cardboard roll at the other end, then frozen. We pull these big rolls from the freezer for bat production.

Unless China is taking our big prepreg machine. Then all they have to do is have the small premade spools sent there instead.

[schmoozer]

3 hours ago, William said:

Actually I'm not sure how they are going to handle the production part of it as far as the base material is concerned. Our bats are composite, which yes, does have wood in the "mix". 

Here at the facility, we have this huge conveyor type machine that is fed with composite "strands, " that come off of small spools, I mean dozens of them simultaneously. They are all fed together into this machine, being mixed with resin and pressed together into a continuous sheet of composite material. It's then wrapped around a cardboard roll at the other end, then frozen. We pull these big rolls from the freezer for bat production.

Wasn’t aware they were composites, no more broken bats.

[William]

1 hour ago, schmoozer said:

Wasn’t aware they were composites, no more broken bats.

I'll try to grab some pics at a later date. 👍

[William]

We manufacturer both one and 2 piece bats. What I mean by that is...one piece is your conventional bat that everyone is familiar with. These are constructed of a combination of composite and kevlar weaves which are molded around a metal mandrel. Each press has a mold with 3 cavities. They all operate on 8 minute cycles. During the first 3 minutes of this molding process, a liquid resin is "shot" into the press. At the end of the cycle, the bats are taken from the presses over to the "puller", where the bat shell is pulled off the metal mandrel after a few minutes of cooling. If the are pulled to quickly, you'll have a squished barrel because the shell was still too soft. After pulling, they are loaded up in carts and taken to the surface prep department for sanding. You can stay pretty busy when all three presses are running simultaneously. Ones always either opening or closing. We have only ran 3 presses for some time now, but back in the heyday, we operated with 6 presses. Imagine 2 guys running all 6 at once. You had to have spot on timing always.

2 piece bats came into the mix maybe 8 years ago or so. They consist of a carbon fiber barrel with a handle that is glued to it separately. The composite layers are rolled onto smaller metal mandrels, then wrapped in both poly and nylon tapes. After this, they are baked for 3 hours. After that they are also pulled and sent for sanding. The handle is added to the barrel after sanding is completed and before arriving in finishing. 

I've always preferred the single piece bats myself. Just love the flex technology involved with the contact area, or "sweet spot" of the barrel. If anyone ever watched a video of a Miken bat hitting a softball in extreme slow motion, you can actually see the barrel BEND inwards at the point of contact. I'm by no means an athlete but when I was playing softball tournaments in my mid 40's, I was hitting home runs! Not the easiest thing to do especially since I only played one weekend a year! I quit when I could run that good anymore (smoking wasn't helping matters either!) My all time favorite Miken bat was the Intensit-E. Old school bats like that and the original Ultra 2 sell for big bucks. The Maniac series was pretty good too. 

[William]

Almost forgot the Big News. We were informed that the last day for softball and baseball bat production will be April 3rd. 

[William]

[schmoozer]

On 1/17/2023 at 4:40 AM, William said:

Any updates?

[William]

IUpdates indeed...alot has taken place since my last post here! April 3rd of last year, the employee cuts took place, leaving only 6 employees, including myself. Helmet manufacturing continued as usual along with the introduction of "pad printing", basically stamping various logos onto Rawlings softballs.

If outsourcing our bat production to China wasn't bad enough, Disaster struck again in mid October on a Saturday morning when a fire broke out in the major production building, totally destroying it.

Videos of this can be viewed on YouTube by searching "Miken Sports Fire" ....

I really thought this was it, the straw that broke the camels back. They won't rebuild. Easier just to move the Helmet production to St. Louis, Where Rawlings is based. 

Amazingly, after 2 weeks, we were called back. Helmet molding, you see, was set up in the building that DIDN'T burn. If you watch the video, you will see that an enclosed hallway connected the old production building with what is the newer building, which was built after my employment began in 2006. That enclosed hallway was ripped away by the firefighters before it could spread.

We were called to a special meeting with the CEO of Rawlings, who made the trip up from St.Louis to inform us that we would be staying put with production and that they will be rebuilding on the same site, which will be a large distribution center.

Since that day, Helmet production has doubled and pad printing is now beginning to ramp up again. During the months before the fire, the production facility was slowly being packed up for transportation to China. Many other pictures of equipment went for auction online and was sold. That's the hallway that connected the two buildings.

[William]

Here's some pictures that I took the last few days of bat production...2nd too last pic was the very last bat I sanded.

[William]

A group shot of the crew on April before we said our farewells to each other 

[William]

Just now, William said:

A group shot of the crew on April before we said our farewells to each other 

I'm on the left wearing the white miken cap 🙂

[William]

Ugh...I usually bounce back and forth between helmet molding and helmet surface prep. Well, hopped across the street to go solo (folks using up vacation time), with regards to cutting and sanding to discover that they are 2 days behind. What a mess to climb out of!