Company’s combat coup
Military helmets made in Geelong
A MANUFACTURER of advanced technology combat helmets is set to have the ability to make 80,000 units a year in Geelong.
The Smart Think is also building the capacity to make 200,000 carbon fibre components from its highly automated production process at the ManuFutures innovation hub at Deakin University.
Chief technology officer Tristan Alexander said the company, a partnership with Singaporean interests, was aiming to supply combat helmets to armed forces in SouthEast Asia and the Australian Defence Force.
“We have one current con- tract … and we are also applying for two tenders for different South-East Asia markets,” Mr Alexander said.
He said the company’s ceramic helmets were lighter than conventional counterparts and made more quickly using advanced D4 technology.
“It can form complex threedimensional shapes from a two-dimensional stack of fabric in a single step,” Mr Alexander said.
The guest speaker at Entrepreneurs Geelong’s monthly ‘In Conversation …’ series, Mr Alexander said the design of combat helmets was largely unchanged from 1985 until 2005, when the Australian Defence Force encouraged new ways to reduce the weight of body armour.
Deakin University became involved in an ongoing research project with Australia’s Defence Materials Technology Centre.
Mr Alexander, who at the end of his first year of study at Deakin in 2009 was offered a position as a researcher, was involved in the research amid other projects for the defence industry until the end of 2016.
He said that in late 2016 a Melbourne company, which had invested years and a few million dollars into the research, withdrew from it after a corporate takeover, and he founded The Smart Think to continue the work, securing investors in early 2017.
The company has developed a machine that creates a helmet that is 30 per cent of the weight of conventional combat and made in oneeighth of the time.
“We have one of the machines online and … within the next six months we will have the rest of them online,” he said.
The Smart Think is also looking at developing motorcycle helmets and within the next two years building its own ceramics facility.
Mr Alexander said being based at Deakin provided access to capital equipment and a research talent pool.
“Over the years we have built an exceptional team,” Mr Alexander said.
“When you are working on tech that is so different … you need to have that team for the entire journey.”