Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Please Reply to: Richard Sacks rsacks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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An Open Letter To Ride Camp

Over the last week a number of Ride Camp members who have never
used our products or met me have either inadvertently or
deliberately maligned my company's products and my personal
integrity. In my attempts to reach two of them by telephone,
they have either hung up on me or refused to return my calls.
Several others who have jumped on their band wagon and, from
what we can tell have not used our product, haven't even
bothered to call us for clarification. The information these
people have provided you is false and misleading. With all due
respect to the educational levels and expertise in their
appropriate fields, they are not experts in the technology we
use in our products. We also do not denigrate other vendors
products. We, in fact, acknowledge that, over the years,  they
have been going in the right direction. In fact, one of the
other manufacturers who uses visco elastic foam in their pad
was, in part, the inspiration for us to develop our product. We
have just gone further. When another product fits a rider's
needs better, we recommend it. However, we feel we have a
superior product for most riders and horses.

When we first developed this pad, our purpose was to follow
through on the statement many use, "Equine Athletes". Our goal
was to provide our own personal horses with the same technology
afforded many professional athletes, military members, fire
fighters, and astronauts, in order to enhance our horse's
performance and comfort levels. We believe strongly that we are
guardians for our horses and that we have the responsibility to
treat them as humanely as possible when we ask them to push the
envelope.

We felt that when a rider and a saddle are placed on a horse
there are multiple negative impacts on the physiology of the
horse that need to be addressed. These include fit, impact, heat
retention, moisture transport, and impairment of blood flow. We
felt that many of the products on the market, including saddles
and saddle pads, were based on centuries old technology and did
a poor job of addressing these issues. We researched many new,
proven technologies that we felt addressed these issues. We
tested them on static test beds, under conditions that would
prove fatal to horses, if tested on live subjects, prior to
testing them on our own horses. The results of our tests support
our claims and nothing more. When we introduced our product, we
felt so strongly about its capabilities, that we offered, and
still do, a generous money back guarantee. We believe that our
pad addresses the above negative impacts better than any other
product on the market.

Our pad is nothing more than a double layer pad of wool felt with
visco elastic foam sandwiched between the two layers. The bottom
layer of wool felt has two smart textiles, that are incorporated
in the manufacture of the felt. The upper layer of felt is
bonded to non backed 1000 denier Cordura to enhance the ability
of the product to breathe. Most Cordura is backed with poly
urethane to enhance water resistance but this inhibits its
ability to breathe. The ability to breathe, in textiles, is
typically defined as the ability to allow air and water to pass
through the fabric uninhibited. The design of our pad uses the
moisture transport capabilities of its components to move
moisture away from the horse through the first layer of felt, to
the open cell visco elastic foam, which acts as a sponge and
traps the moisture. When the foam is compressed by the rider and
horse movement, the moisture is moved to the upper layer of felt
and the layer of nylon Cordura. The nylon layer has even greater
moisture transport capabilities than wool and allows the
moisture to be moved out of the pad. The moisture will either
evaporate when exposed to outside air or typically find the path
of least resistance and will flow down the outside of the pad.

Some of this moisture will be trapped by the saddle, depending on
the construction of the saddle and the amount of air flow it
affords. Leather, in its own right is considered to breathe.
This is no different than any other pad that breathes on the
market. However, many other pads use materials that do not
breathe. They incorporate materials such as neoprene, other
closed cell foams, solid plastic sheets reinforced with
hexagonal structures, plastic sheets reinforced with circular
structures, and impermeable bladders filled with air and gel.
None of the these materials will allow air or moisture to pass
through them and thus retain inordinate amounts of heat against
the horse's back.

The visco elastic foam was incorporated in our products to assist
in both areas of fit and impact. Other manufacturers of saddle
pads use visco elastic foam in their pads. However, each
manufacturer formulates their foams differently due to patents
and requirements for different applications. We chose the
particular foam we used after evaluating others because we
believe it performs better in the equestrian application. This
decision was based on tests that evaluated impact load
deflection, rebound, ability to breathe, and heat retention. The
abilities of visco elastic foam have been well documented and
highly marketed by other firms. One simply has to turn on the
television to see TempurPedic's infomercial to realize the
benefits of this material. This material has been used in many
applications in addition to beds, including motorcycle and
bicycle seats, chairs, aircraft ejection seats, body and head
armor (employed by all U.S. forces in Iraq), as well as
equestrian applications. Some implementations perform better
than others. We feel that our choice of material is the superior
choice for our application. To dismiss this technology as not
applicable for equestrian use is simply wrong.

The two smart textiles incorporated in the bottom layer of wool
felt were included to minimize heat retention and enhance
impaired blood flow.  One is called phase change material and
the other is known as Holofiber. Both have been proven, both by
our testing, as well as independent testing, to have significant
positive physiological effects on mammals (that includes humans
and horses) in addition to other objects. These smart textiles
and advanced foams have been in use for many years in some cases
and one is very new. They have been incorporated into thousands
of every day products that many of you already use, by well over
200 companies, under license to the original developers. Many of
these companies, TempurPedic, Adidas, Boeri, Bugatti, Burton,
Gold Toe, K2, Lands' End, National Geographic, New Balance,
Nordica, Phenix, ProShield, Rukka, Serta, SuperFeet, Swany,
Teva, Timberland, The North Face, Wacoal, Wamsutta, and Wigwam,
are well known to you. Additionally, one of the technologies we
use, phase change material, is used in the computer you are
using to read this letter to manage heat build up on CPU's. In
fact, every hard drive in computers today uses both phase change
material and visco elastic foam.

These technologies were originally developed by Triangle Research
and Development Corp. under SBIR agreements with NASA and the
U.S. Air Force, Navy and Army. Their original purpose was for
use in space gloves to protect astronauts from the extremes of
both cold and scorching temperatures. They since evolved to
include boots for both hot and cold environments, body armor,
electronics, fire protection clothing, beds, seating
applications, blankets, sports and every day clothing, and now
equestrian products. The science behind these technologies is
proven and sound. They perform better than older technologies
including Thinsulate. They are expensive technologies, but they
work.

Phase-change materials in specialized clothing change from solid
to liquid to maintain a comfortable body temperature in
oppressive environments. To measure the dynamic thermal
performance of fabrics containing phase-change materials, a new
standard is being developed by ASTM Committee D13 on Textiles.
According to Colorado State University professor Doug Hittle,
Ph.D., who invented a test instrument and protocol for this
innovation with Tifani Andre, a former CSU grad student in
Design and Merchandising, "as phase-change materials absorb body
heat, they reduce the distractions of heat and cold
fluctuations, providing a new superior level of comfort in
clothing".

The original developer of both micro and macro encapsulated PCMS
(phase change materials) is David P, Clovin, Ph.D. He holds over
14 patents for the development of phase change material,
including all the base patents for this technology. He currently
has over 21 different contracts through TRDC and Delta Thermal
Apparel with the U.S. military and other government agencies. He
is considered the foremost expert on phase change materials in
the world and is the original licensor of the technology. He is
responsible for most of the comfort systems developed for NASA
and the military. Much of his work is classified and
proprietary, as is the work done by many of his licensees. He
was gracious enough to provide me with a copy a  presentation
that he gave at CTT Montreal last year.

In this presentation, he provide testing results on the use of
phase change material in both cold an hot environments. In the
cold environment testing, done for deep water diving suits on a
military contract, phase change composite fabrics were evaluated
alone or with very thin Thinsulate insulation (CDS40) included
in the composite. During the period of phase change, the test
samples containing latent thermal energy storage remained warmer
longer at the skin/fabric interface as well as throughout the
surrounding layers. It was found that the effectiveness of a PCM
layer was increased when a thin layer (1.45 mm; 0.057 inch) of
Thinsulate insulation (CDS40) was incorporated into the fabric
composite. The temperatures remained warmer even following the
phase change period. The slight difference shown after steady
state reflects an enhanced performance of the Thinsulate layer
due to trapped warm air. However, all microPCM composites
remained warmer than Thinsulate alone, even after the phase
change period. This differential lasted for as long as two hours
without recharging the microPCMS.