US Patent 10448695 Ballistic helmets and method of manufacture thereof

A method for manufacturing a high performance thermoplastic matrix composite ballistic helmet includes forming/shaping highly consolidated helmet preforms free of wrinkles and with no cuts or seams from a flat stack of 0/90 uni-directional prepreg layers, both with and without carbon epoxy skins or layers, using a pressure forming process. The wrinkle free and no cuts pre-formed helmet shell is pre-heated and placed between match-metal dies in a compression molding press to be molded under constant pressure during heating at high temperature and cooling down to below 160° F. in less than 45 minutes.