How a helmet is made

The shell

It starts as pellets. Thermoplastic polycarbonate alloy is fed into a hopper and melted, then injected into a helmet-shaped mold and held for roughly a minute while it takes the form.

Once the shell is hard it goes to a multi-fixture drill, which punches the fourteen or fifteen holes the hardware needs. Those positions are what the face mask, the liner and the chin strap all hang from, so they are machined rather than marked by hand.

Paint and finish

The outside is roughened with an orbital sander first. Paint does not hold on a smooth molded surface, and every coat after this one depends on that step.

Then primer, color coats, and a high-grade clear coat, sprayed in temperature-controlled rooms. The color is in the paint rather than a wrap, which is why a chrome or matte finish reads differently in a room than it does in a photograph.

A club design with hand-masked detail can take hours of painting on a single shell. It is the slowest part of the process and the part people notice first.

Padding and hardware

The inside is built up with foam, air bladders, or a printed lattice. Riddell's Diamond liner is the newest of those, made with Carbon and printed rather than cut, which lets the padding vary in stiffness across one piece.

A plastic-coated steel face guard is fitted to the shell, then the decals, the cautionary labels and an adjustable chin strap go on. A final inspection is the last thing that happens before it is boxed.

What we do here

If you order OnField Ready, the shell is unboxed, the facemask or visor you chose is fitted, and the team nameplate and decals are applied by hand. One fee covers that work however much you add.