Help! Is this Adidas mask Titanium?

[dcallins@hotmail.com]

Is this mask Titanium? Yes or no. If not what type of metal do you think it is. There are several of these masks on Ebay going for $120 to $170. 

[codizzle]

I believe @tpatience or @MadMax discovered it was hollow steel. I remember seeing a picture in the forums of an Adidas chopped throat guard and it was hollow inside. 

[Thunderheads]

17 minutes ago, codizzle said:

I believe @tpatience or @MadMax discovered it was hollow steel. I remember seeing a picture in the forums of an Adidas chopped throat guard and it was hollow inside. 

I thought it was Titanal

[Razzer]

Some are solid many are hollow but the Reebok and Adidas are not Titanium.

From the photos...this is hollow due to the crimping on the tubes

[Aging_Arbiter]

Unobtanium!

[catsbackr]

Boy the ends in the first picture sure don't look hollow to me.  Just sayin...

[boyinr]

The one that I bought that was identical to that was steel. It's a great mask and very lightweight. 

[Replacematt]

Flip it over. What do the welds look like?

[MadMax]

Any of these Adidas -produced Icon -shaped masks are not titanium.

Instead, they’ve been showing up in one of two constructions. The majority of them are a really well-made hollow steel. Instead of being a large, thin-walled tube that gets dipped in vinyl cladding (as most of the Nike Icon hollow steels were), these are a narrower tube with thicker walls, and when lightly powdercoated with what amounts to a sealant, looks a lot like titanium. The welds are neat; much neater than the Nike Icon steels, primarily because the Nike completed masks were dipped, and the dip would obscure ugly welds.

However, I adamantly maintain I had a different variant in my hands in the past 2 years. Looks exactly like an Icon, but instead of hollow steel, was solid wire. In order to achieve similar lightweight-ness as aluminum and titanium, steel must be hollow. So, if it’s solid, it’s gotta be titanium or aluminum. We already established that these are not titanium, so could it have been aluminum? Doubtful, because pure aluminum masks usually have brittle welds (prime to pop). So, what’s an aluminum alloy that allows for more steel-like ductility and more effective welding? And, something a European company like Adidas would have access to? Titanal... invented and controlled by an Austrian company.

So, my writings and suggestions that these masks might be Titanal are speculative, but are deductive based on the available evidence and factors.

[catsbackr]

Max,

 

Mine looks just like the one in the picture above.  Oh, but I do have the black Adidas pads (thanks @UMPCourse John).

 

It is light and offers a great view.  Which one do I have?

[boyinr]

2 hours ago, catsbackr said:

Max,

 

Mine looks just like the one in the picture above.  Oh, but I do have the black Adidas pads (thanks @UMPCourse John).

 

It is light and offers a great view.  Which one do I have?

Take a magnet from your refrigerator. If it sticks to your frame, it is steel. If it doesn't it is something else. 

[codizzle]

Check out the end of this thread for the pictures of the throat guard chopped off. You can see it's some sort of hollow metal. However, I don't know if your Adidas is identical to the one mentioned in the other thread. 

[The Short Umpire]

@dcallins@hotmail.comI have a couple of these masks for sale. They are hollow steel but are pretty dang light-weight. I really like mine. I use the one mentioned in the above post, chopped and powder coated. If you’re interested then I can beat any price you find on ebay. Mine are also brand-new. 

 

[Thunderheads]

Mad Max: Hollow steel it is, according to my Adidas contact. They’re all moving away from Titanium b/c of safety. MORE and more MLB and MiLB umpires are moving AWAY from titanium so they can prolong their careers. 
Adidas and Nike make a great mask. I’ll still take my Force 3 based on how many times over the years I’ve been hit in the head. It would be nice if suppliers loaded up on umpire masks that protect you....... instead of what’s flashy and gets “the sale” b/c of the margins made.

Scott,....
But, you don't use a force 3?

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[MadMax]

10 hours ago, S. Kennedy said:

Hollow steel it is, according to my Adidas contact. They’re all moving away from Titanium b/c of safety. MORE and more MLB and MiLB umpires are moving AWAY from titanium so they can prolong their careers. 

This is false. The manufacturers will say this, but there isn’t a single study, or a testing series, that has statistical proof. Instead, what has compelled them to abandon titanium in favor of either magnesium and aluminum, or (hollow) steel is cost... specifically cost of replacement. 

Aluminum doesn’t bend (at least in mask form). Magnesium certainly doesn’t bend, and if cast, won’t break at the joints. By contrast, hollow steel does bend, but is remarkably cheap to produce and to weld. Mask geometry contributes something to the protective equation, but when a mask is compromised, what do most customers / users do? Replace it! And when they pay a premium price for that mask, there is an implicit, valid belief that they should be supported and serviced by the manufacturer reflective of that premium price!

This is why Nike never sold the Icon Titanium here!

Wilson lost a substantial amount of money on two products in their baseball catalog – the Platinum -edition Titanium mask, and the Shock FX HSM, especially as marketed to catchers. Both premium priced, both with inherit flaws, both representing considerable, complex costs for production, but both were subject to repeated return and/or replacement claims. And with how much influence Wilson wields on the umpiring community, how do you “persuade” them to cease using a particular item? 

The point of sharing all this with you, though, isn’t the mask – it’s the pads! It’s the pads, pads, pads! Not one of these major manufacturers is doing anything to take the pads to the next step. Sure, All-Star is now placing a distributor plate in the jaw pad of the Magnesium mask, but why isn’t this being replicated to all pads? Why isn’t someone brokering a deal with Team Wendy, or another foam innovator? Lately, with improvements made in machining, the pads are precision cut, and cleanly stitched, but why isn’t this more widespread?

Scott, if your contact at Adidas wants to be a part of radically changing and improving the market, then they need to court some new ideas on pads...

... and you know how to contact me.