VIDEO: TOOLING UP – Mechanix Wear Gloves Address the Need for Proper Hand Protection

Narrator: Welcome to Tooling Up, a series by MSC Industrial Supply Company that provides real-world insights brought to you by leading industry experts and aimed at improving the efficiency and productivity of your operations.

Eddie: Hey everybody this is Eddie with MSC and welcome to MSC's Tooling Up featuring Mechanix Wear. On today's episode we're going to be talking about how Mechanix Wear products and technology can help you find the proper fit feel and function for your hand protection program. And here to tell us everything that we need to know is our good friend from the team at Mechanix Wear, Paul. Let's bring him on in. Hey Paul, thank you so much for joining us on today's episode of MSC's Tooling Up. Before we get started why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do for the team at Mechanix Wear?

Paul: Sure. Glad to be here and thank you for the invite. My name is Paul Harris. I'm Vice President of Research and Development for Mechanix Wear. I've been in the glove industry for about 25 years. I have served on International Safety Equipment Association where we help write standards for adoption for ANSI both on gloves and glasses. We have multiple patents on both design and utility and I guess have been the recipient of about seven new product of the year awards over those 25 years. So it's been fun to watch the development in that time.

Eddie: Wonderful. Well thank you so much for joining us on today's episode. So now that you're here, let's jump right in. When it comes to proper hand protection programs, Mechanix Wear is very familiar and in tune with your users and how would you say users’ preferences and needs have changed over the last couple years?

Paul: Well, users are always looking for better options. You know on the surface you think of from a dexterity perspective and from a function perspective of a glove and if the gloves are not comfortable they're not gonna wear them. If they don't wear them they're open for potential injuries. So users have demanded thinner, lighter weight gloves offering more dexterity with greater protection. So that's kind of an interesting combination to achieve but we feel like we've done that in the products that we've developed.

Eddie: And this makes sense and in knowing this, how has Mechanix Wear specifically responded to these changes in preferences?

Paul: Well you know, from a fit, feel, and function perspective, we've spent a lot of time on the unmet needs of the market. Touch is a great example. You look at the proliferation of people within the applications either with some type of handheld scanning device or touch screen on the equipment that they're running and in years past you've had to take your gloves off to be able to operate those. We've incorporated touch into almost all of our products including our dip knit range.

Eddie: So when it comes to your SpeedKnit™ dipped technology, how is that specifically supporting the operator's sense of touch?

Paul: Well we look at it from a few different ways. You know number one is the construction of the product. So you talk about dexterity. Use two, you would have gloves that were kind of in that 7 to 10 gauge category which are pretty bulky, pretty thick. Today you have gloves up to 21 gauge. We went really heavy in the 18 gauge area because it still gives you a lot of good durability of the product, but also provides that fantastic dexterity from the construction. In addition to that, we've incorporated in newer coating technology. I've mentioned the touch earlier. We're also using other coatings that let's say are more environmentally friendly and not detrimental to the wearer which we'll get into here in just a little bit.

Eddie: No, this makes sense and when it comes to dexterity, how important is it truly to users?

Paul: Well from a dexterity perspective for the user, ultimately you want them to perform their job at maximum efficiency. If they can't handle or feel the part that they're manipulating, it's going to add time to their task. So the ability to pass on that dexterity from a construction perspective on how the glove is built is really paramount because it's going to increase that efficiency which is going to make them not only more productive as a worker, but also they're going to feel better about the products they're wearing because they can perform their application to the best of their ability.

Eddie: Hey, this makes sense. And when it comes to this specific technology Paul, what type of comfort is being provided?

Paul: Well on a lot of our products we incorporate a plating technology. So when you take the glove and you turn outside in, a lot of times the inner color of the glove might be a white and that is taking all of the more comfortable material like your nylons and your lycras and incorporating next to the skin while then taking all of your more protective materials that might provide additional cut and putting that externally so that way you're kind of isolating the comfort to the skin and the protection layer externally to the user.

Eddie: And Paul, when it comes to your specific coating how would you say it stacks up against others in the field?

Paul: Well, you've got a lot of let's say traditional coatings in the market whether that's latex, nitrile, solvent-based, polyurethane, or some of the more let's say dated options. And when it comes to if you look at the market overall and the number one unit gloves sold in the dip knit category, it's a solvent-based polyurethane. And you can always tell if it's a solvent-based polyurethane when you turn the glove outside in, you're going to have a lot of bleed through in the product where you see the coating on the inside. That coating is coming in direct contact with your skin and the CDC has released an article that indicates that a long-term exposure to DMF, which is dimethylformamide, is detrimental to the wearer. So it can leach into your skin and cause really health hazards so if you think about it there's a tremendous opportunity for all of us to look at solvent-based polyurethane and find better options, safer options for the wearers.

We did that in coming out with a water-based urethane coating and that coating sits on top of the glove so there's no bleed through or strike through that you can see inside. It's not coming in contact with the wearer's skin. It's not made with the aggressive chemicals that solvent-based polyurethane is. It's OEKO-TEX certified along with reach compliant. And a couple of the other things, it's also going to be silicone free and why that's important a lot of gloves contain trace amounts of silicone. You have certain industries whether that's aerospace industry, painting applications, glass industry, to name a few and certain manufacturing that mandates silicone-free options. And a good example of this, maybe 15 years ago I was called out to a local company that made artificial knees, titanium knees, and they said we have a stack of these thousand, you know ten thousand dollar knees, that are defective that we can't use. Something in our gloves is transferring onto these parts and we're just stacking them up as defects. Can you come out and take a look? And we went out and took a look. The gloves that they were using did contain trace amounts of silicone. That silicone was transferring onto those titanium knees. So I was able to swap them out into a silicone-free option that solved their problems. So certain industries, I mentioned painting, silicone transfers onto the surface. If you're working with that prior to painting, that will cause a defect in the painting. Aerospace that silicone actually works to break down base material that it touches over time if it's there. So silicone free was something that we want to make sure we had plenty of options, plenty of different cut levels and abrasion levels for the end users.

And the other thing I talked about earlier was touch capability. And if you look at the proliferation of touch capable devices really within the last 10 years, you've got a lot of people on cell phones for various reasons, handheld scanning devices in warehouse applications checking inventory levels, and then also a lot of the machinery has been retrofit to have control panels that are touch capable. So if the gloves did not have touch, people were going in, they were having to take the gloves off and that immediately opens them up for hazard. So within our speed knit category, all of our styles have touch capability and it's actually built into the coating itself and this is with the glove for the life span of the product.

Eddie: This does make sense and I know we're discussing what we're removing from this coating. So Paul, what are you adding to it to really increase that protection?

Paul: Well from the coating itself, I've mentioned you know the touch capabilities. So we are using positively charged ions in the coating itself. So we're not stitching a couple of copper stitches in two fingers of the product or we're not dipping two fingers in a secondary process. The entire coating is touch capable and that's going to be with the product for the life of the product. From the actual construction of the glove you know we want to talk about the use of tungsten steel. And with tungsten steel you can have all kind of different quality levels of steel when it comes to applying your glove. You can have hamburger meat level which oftentimes the hardness factor is very inconsistent or you can go up to a tungsten, which is the hardest alloy known and has a very high hardness factor. And we've determined that the hardness factor has a direct correlation to being able to achieve high levels of cut and we stay away from using glass in our products because that glass does diminish with use and can cause the contact dermatitis along with much reduced performance from a cut resistance with use because that glass breaks over time.

Eddie: This is all wonderful information to know Paul. And before we wrap things up, would you be so kind as to give us a quick recap on everything you've guided us through today?

Paul: Sure. So our new speed knit line of dip knit products we really spent time in trying to address fit, feel, and function along with some of the unmet needs of the market and we determined those to be extreme high performance but still providing extreme level of dexterity and comfort, touch capabilities, DMF free, along with silicone free and really finding the balance of the product that's going to give a safe option for the wearer from being DMF free, safe for the products in silicone free with no transfer, but then also offering that top level dexterity and comfort while not sacrificing your protection levels as I mentioned up to a level A9 or cut.

Eddie: Thanks so much for that quick recap Paul. And lastly, for those who need to learn more, where can we go to get more information on not only the products we've discussed today, but all the other amazing advancements that you're bringing to the market?

Paul: Sure. You can see all of our products at mscdirect.com/mechanixwear.

Eddie: Wonderful. Hey thank you so much Paul for joining us on today's episode of MSC's Tooling Up featuring Mechanix Wear.

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