It's taken a long time to get to custom formulation plastic for our GoPro mounts. We have the highest quality plastic of any GoPro accessory.
Our plastic supplier profiled every company's polycarbonate plastic that was being used in their parts. We told them the issues we'd had with parts and what we wanted to solve when we made our parts.
This was our laundry list that we gave our supplier as we aimed for the highest quality GoPro parts ever made. We also told them why we needed those qualities in the material.
- Be almost impossible to break. We wanted it so strong that if it broke, it only broke in a catastrophic situation where the survival of the mount was the last thing on your mind, your own survival was more important and surprising.
- Flexes instead of shattering on impact. We wanted a plastic that would flex on impacts so that the shock would be transferred through the entire part instead of focusing on one part and overwhelming it, leading to breaking. We also wanted to avoid those situations where you were so nervous about your GoPro positioning that you overtightened it to the point of failure. We wanted no failure point by over tightening.
- It had to be "sticky" when paired with accessories from other brands. If it wasn't "sticky" it wouldn't work because no matter how much you tightened it on to another product it would still slip and allow the GoPro to move.
- Look good. It had to look great. This one turned out to be pretty easy.
- We wanted to offer a lifetime warranty on the parts we make. Patagonia and other brands do it and we wanted to as well. We want to know when our parts fail so we can make them better. Higher performance plastic is greener than lower quality. I can't really say about the different production techniques, but I figured that if our part doesn't break, that's one less piece sailing off into space followed by loud swearing. Broken parts seldom make it to the recycle bin. They are usually hurled far and cursed at because it ruined the shot. So by making parts that are almost unbreakable, less plastic gets tossed.
We did it. The custom formulation achieved everything and more than we'd dare dream. It turned out to be crazy expensive but we didn't care because not missing the shot and getting the shot of a lifetime is priceless.
Since I don't drink, this is how I celebrate. The Celebration Banana!
