How are they made to fulfill this function? Analyzing a safety shoe cut will help you answer these questions.
Protective Cap
The protective cap is also called in common parlance “shell” or “shell.” Depending on the type of shoes, it meets different levels of requirement. Work shoes are not required to include a toe cap. The toe cap must protect against falling objects up to 100 joules and resist compression up to 10,000 Newtons for protective footwear.
Safety shoes must protect against falling objects up to 200 joules, which is approximately a fall of a 20 kg object from one meter high. It must also withstand compression up to 15,000 Newton, which corresponds to a one and a half tons pressure.
End caps can be steel, aluminum, polycarbonate (injected plastic), or composite (fiberglass). We mainly distinguish between metallic end caps (steel or aluminum) and non-metallic end caps (polycarbonate or composite).
Non-metallic protective caps have several advantages over metal caps:
- They are at least 20% lighter than a conventional steel toe cap
- They drive less hot and cold
- They resist several shocks
- They are painless thanks to a more ergonomic shape
The use of a non-metallic toe cap is also essential to design 100% metal-free safety shoes, which is especially important in some work environments with a lot of metal detector tests like airports, for example.
Buttress
Located at the back of the soft sole safety shoes (รองเท้า safety พื้น นุ่ม which is the term in Thai) at the heel, the function of the heel counter is to offer excellent support and limit the risk of sprains, rather than having a heel counter integrated into the upper. The advantage of this design is that the heel counter is less affected by sweat or humidity. Its effectiveness is thus more durable.
