JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #83 - August/September 2013 - 16

sport & leisure

Composite baseball bat technology

RIP-IT Sporting Goods, a leader in composite
bat technology, presents a review of composite
baseball bat technologies and discusses how
these innovative bats have changed the pastime
of baseball.

By

Heather Henderson
Associate Director of
Internet Marketing
RIP-IT Sports

C

omposite materials have
come a long way over
the years and have impacted almost every field of
industry from transportation
and construction to industrial storage and aeronautics.
While composite materials
have consistently been utilized to create storage tanks

RIP-IT’s full line of composite bats

and other industrial developments, the baseball industry
has slowly gained traction
in the arena of composite
material development and
has implemented composite
technologies into America’s
favourite sport.

A late start
Although composite materials were used to create
softball bats as early as
the 1980’s, the introduction of the aluminium bat
overshadowed composite
technologies for roughly 20
years. Around the turn of
the century (early 2000’s),
composite material technologies progressed forward
and brought the composite

bat back into
the limelight. By
2001, Louisville
Slugger produced
a slow-pitch
composite bat
that received an
award as the best
performing bat
at that year’s Bat
Wars and soon
after, other key
bat manufacturers
began exploring
composite technologies.

New bat materials changing
the game

Woven composite materials plated with an aluminum
for light weight bats

Aluminium bats
originally overshadowed the
innovations of composite
bats in the game of baseball but as the years have
progressed, new technologies have arisen that have
once again made composite
bats leaders in the baseball
market.
Gone are the days of wooden
and aluminium bats, resulting in new composite bats
that are regulated by the new
development of BBCOR
Standards (new regulations
to maintain safe play because
non-regulated composite
bats increase ball hitting distance and speed, making for
unsafe playing conditions)
and utilizing the lightweight
and “pop” technologies that
only composite textiles can
provide.

16 jec composites magazine / No83 August - September 2013

New composite bat
technologies
RIP-IT is constantly looking
to develop new ways to work
with composite materials
and create the best bats on
the market that fit within the
latest BBCOR standards for
safe play. The two technologies listed below are featured
in the company’s new lines
of bats and would not be
possible without composite
materials.
AIR technology
With the development of
composite bats, manufacturers have been able to
remove a significant amount
of weight from the bat’s
barrel into the handle, resulting in fast swing time while
maintaining the bat’s durabi
JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #83 - August/September 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #83 - August/September 2013
