New EN388 Impact test

In 2016, the European Standard for Protective Gloves (EN388:2016) added an impact test. This was the first time that a standard was used for impact resistance in the industrial market.

Why was the impact standard created?

There are a lot of gloves that claim they provide impact resistance and this can be confusing for an end user to navigate through. The impact standard was created because all gloves with thermal plastic rubber on the back of the hand were viewed equally when realistically one glove could provide you with more protection then the other.
Having a back of hand standard will help educate customers about impact protection and which gloves are best suited for use in specific applications.

What does the impact test involve?
The new EN388 impact test is based on the EN13594:2015 Standard for Protective gloves for motorcycle riders. This test is optional and only applies to gloves claiming impact protection.

The test consists of:

•The Glove being tested is cut, opened out flat and laid out over a domed anvil w/ sensors underneath
•The glove surface is struck with a 2.5kg striker at a distance sufficient enough to provide an impact energy of 5J
•If the average transmitted force is less than or equal to 7kN, then the gloves will receive a Level 1 Pass rating
•If the average transmitted force is higher than 9kN, then the gloves will receive a Level 0 Fail rating

The video below will show you our #025 Overtime glove being tested under the EN388 impact standard.

Updated EN388 Marking

You will start to see a revised EN388:2016 glove marking on all of our marketing material. A “P” or “F” will be found at the end of the EN388 shield for impact gloves that have been tested, shown below. The “P” stands for gloves that have passed the impact test and the “F” will be for the gloves that failed.

What’s next?
We have started to test all of our impact gloves and under the new PPE regulation. Satra announced that all manufactures who wish to market their gloves as having impact protection have until April 2019 to have their gloves tested.

We are happy to announce that #578 Drill Sergeant and #025 Overtime have been tested under the new impact standard and have passed. We will keep you updated on all of the test results on our other impact gloves.

Click to download the #578 Drill Sergeant spec sheet

Click to download the #025 Overtime spec sheet

Sneak Peak

ANSI (American National Standards Institute) has also announced that they are working on an impact standard for the North American market which will be launched later this year.