Sports Bats
Sports bats must be sufficiently stiff, strong and durable to withstand multiple impacts during play. Plastic bats may be formed by injection molding but, in general, plastics are neither stiff or impact resistant enough. Gaff and Lin developed a one piece, injection-molded, hollow bat with barrel, intermediate and handle sections. At least one of these sections has an internal polygonal cross-section for stiffening. The polygonal internal cross-section may be any non-circular, polygonal shape, such as pentagon, hexagon, or square. A suitable, injection moldable resin is an ABS with 15 to 35% acrylonitrile, 5 to 30% butadiene and 40 to 60% styrene. (RDC 3/5/2010) (Gaff and Lin, US Patent 7,651,420, 1/26/2010)
Recent US Patents
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Review Articles
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Editor's Notes
As the literature is reviewed, and items of interest concerning this topic are found. These may be added in an abbreviated form with the reference. Readers and contributors are invited to add their own notes. Contributors may add them directly and other readers can simply send their notes to the editor, Roger Corneliussen at rcorneliussen@4spe.org. He may edit and add them to this page at his discretion.