Custom Shin Pad Design
DESIGN OPTIONS
Batoco offers all its shin pad shapes with 3 design options: carbon, vinyl or painted. The design choice impacts the labour time of graphics designers and painters, the cost of the involved materials and finishing techniques required for your custom shin pad design.
F1 shin pads are sprayed with multiple layers of high-end automotive clear coat. The clear coat protects your design from UV degradation and brings out a smooth mirror-like finish. T1 models benefit from a laminate to protect the shell design.
Although images and graphics design allow for shin pad customisation, helmets and luxury cars are painted and not without reason. Custom painting brings out the flare and depth of your design, and enlarges the colour palette with neons, candies, chrome, metal foils, pearls, metallics etc. Lettering, pin striping, stencils and airbrushing allow for astonishing details unachievable with classic sticker printing. The thin paint layer avoids borders that are unavoidable with stickers.
The painted finish allows you to combine several special effects and images of your choice. As the ultimate design and luxurious option, your painted shin pads are packaged in a leather bag.
Nevertheless, if you only want a single or two different special effects, it might be more interesting for you to add special effects to a sticker or gloss carbon design option.
STICKER VS PAINTED FINISH
The personalised shin guard on the left has a sticker finish with a protective clear laminate. The one on the right has the same image, but has the added design effect of black airbrushing. It is then clearcoated twice (with three layers) before being polished to a mirror-like finish.
The painted shin pad’s gloss is unrivaled by the clear laminate and the black airbrush makes the image stand out.
SHIN PAD REFINISHING EXCELLENCE
For every pair of personalised shin pads. Batoco targets an original design that fits with your personality and preferences. Experienced painters value details and graphic designers spare no efforts in the quest of making your shin pads a work of art. Batoco does not hesitate to repaint shin pads if not satisfied with the results.
Besides, top-notch vinyl, paints and clear coats from world class brands translate into improved paint durability, greater colour and effect ranges, superior shine, and high protection of your design. Clear coated guards go twice through the painting cabin – each time getting 3 layers of varnish! Next, the surface is wet sanded with high grit, super fine sandpaper to ensure a deep, smooth, mirror-like finish that brings out the beauty of your creation.
Finally, you get to choose between a matte or gloss finish. If you are undecided, why not combine both?
SHIN PAD REFINISHING EXCELLENCE
For every pair of personalised shin pads. Batoco targets an original design that fits with your personality and preferences. Experienced painters value details and graphic designers spare no efforts in the quest of making your shin pads a work of art. Batoco does not hesitate to repaint shin pads if not satisfied with the results.
Besides, top-notch sticker materials, paints and clear coats from world class brands translate into improved paint durability, greater colour and effect ranges, superior shine, and high protection of your design. Clear coated guards go twice through the painting cabin – each time getting 3 layers of varnish! Next, the surface is wet sanded with high grit, super fine sandpaper to ensure a deep, smooth, mirror-like finish that brings out the beauty of your creation.
Finally, you get to choose between a matte or gloss finish. If you are undecided, why not combine both?
UNIQUE DESIGN EFFECTS FOR YOUR CUSTOM SHIN PADS
For a better render of the effects available, please visit our Instagram page. The highlighted story “design” shows many effects.
Standard Opaque
Opaque colours are standard choices in painted custom shin pad design. Combining the different base colours allows to create an infinite number of tones and shades that can be matched with the Coated Pantone System. Specific codes might be chosen to match with your country, club or even a personal sponsor.
Example: A painted Belgium flag on the bottom of a custom shin pad.
Fluorescent & Neon
Some colours catch your eyes more than others. Think about those packages on a shelf that just seek your attention. The bright helmets that motorcycle drivers wear to avoid accidents? Your highlighters? The same principle applies to your custom shin pad design.
Fluorescent colours – also known as neons – absorb and reflect more light than traditional shades, making them brighter and standing out. This extra glow stems from the re-emitting of a larger number of waves from the colour spectrum (technical info here).
Neons react to ultraviolet light and are therefore not visible without a light source. When dimming the light, the pigment glow will gradually disappear. Phosphorescent, AKA glow-in-the-dark colours by contrast continue to emit light when not exposed to any light for a short period of time.
Not everything is bright with fluorescent colours though: prolonged exposition to UVs makes the colour fade away. It is therefore important to store neon painted shin pads away from direct sunlight and ideally in their bag.
Example: Neon paint plates. From left to right, yellow, green, blue, red, pink and honey orange.
Metallic, Flakes & Pearl
“Metallic paint” is slang to describe paint that shimmers and sparkles in the sunlight. For true metallics, the metallic effect often originates from finely ground aluminium, with size and brightness variations resulting from the used pigment type. Lighter coloured metallic paints are more difficult to spray evenly than darker ones and therefore require expert painters. The durability of metallic paints is excellent.
Pearls essentially replace the fine metallic powder with pearlescent pigments (often ceramic powder) to achieve a similar effect. With even more choice of sparkling substrate, pearl paints are often said to have more “depth” than metallic paints. Lighter colours tend to be more transparent than their metal powder counterparts and can require three coats (a coloured base, a transparent midcoat containing the pearl and a clearcoat) to obtain a perfect finish. Pearl finishes have a similar durability to metallic colours.
Flakes share the same purpose as pearls and metallics: sparkle! Various sizes and colours co-exist and are made from hexagonal polyester “flakes” covered with metal. The flakes application requires to add them to a transparent basecoat or clearcoat, which is then sprayed on top of any base colour.
Example: A combination of gloss and matte finish on metallic gold, pearl white and pearl black.
Chrome
Chrome, overall, produces an extreme metallic reflection that provides spectacular depths of colour. Furthermore, chrome can even be coloured with candy paints.
However, the chrome effect obtained on your shin pads uses a different technique than the classic chrome plating – the acid-dipping technique that gets the mirror finish on metal objects such as wheels. For a full chrome coverage, the use of water in the coating can create minor defects in the finish. These can be seen with the naked eye and are considered as normal in the process. If you are only aiming for partial chrome, then a chrome vinyl can be used to create specific shapes. Even so, risks of small bubbles exist in such an application.
Example: A custom shin pad design with chrome vinyl, ultra wide pin striping yellow neon and metallic blue.
Candy
Candy colours have unrivalled “depth of colour” in which the sparkle seems immersed within the colour. This immersion is the reason why candies are also referred to as “wet look” paints. The deep and brilliant shine in almost any light is possible because candy is in fact a die and not a paint. Unquestionably, candies truly belong to the most spectacular effects.
Often used in a three-step process, in conjunction with a first layer of reflective basecoat (metallic, pearl, chrome) and a third layer of high gloss clearcoat, candy colours exhibit a deep, coloured sparkle not achievable with other automotive paints. Changing the basecoat can therefore have an important impact on your result. However, a popular choice on your shin pads is to spray candy colours directly on top of the carbon fibre pattern. This makes the carbon weave stand out and enables to put an emphasis on your pictures.
A couple of downsides to true candies are that they are harder to apply and their durability is not as good as those of solid, pearl, or metallic finishes. The application influences the tone of colour and therefore requires perfection. You can compare it with a highlighter: each additional layer makes the zone darker. Repairing scratches within transparent colours is therefore almost impossible and requires restarting from scratch. By using high quality clearcoats that include UV screeners, your candies last as long as possible (5 years and more with limited sun exposure).
Example: A carbon shin pad with red, gold, green, purple and orange candy paint, metallic green and a chrome vinyl stripe.
Finish: Gloss, Matte or a Combination?
Extra shine and light reflection or preferably a more neutral, grainier texture? Both finishes, or a combination of gloss and matte, can be applied on all colours. Your finish choice can have a dramatic effect on the final appearance of your shin pads.
A matte finish has the benefit of hiding dirt better than gloss, but it is also harder to clean and care for. The different characteristics are explained by the matte’s finish imperfect texture that diffuses light instead of reflecting it.
Example: Matte clearcoat on the carbon, gloss clearcoat on the marble black and white paint, confetti vinyl pinstripe, honey orange neon. Use of stencils for repeated Batoco logos in the marble.
Other Effects & Techniques
Marble offers an exciting and special style. Applied on top of any basecoat, a deep marble or snake skin effect is created by applying a texturing pattern with the special marble paint.
Pin striping is the process of applying a very thin line of paint or vinyl to create an own, custom look. The pine stripe recommended minimum thickness is 1.5mm. When using vinyl for very thin pin stripes, special effects like confetti and holograms can be obtained. In similar fashion, lettering allows your name and number to reflect your desires in intricate details.
A stencil, or ‘Pochoir”, can be used within a base coat to precisely replicate a shape or pattern. A logo, number, image or text can easily be replicated this way.
Gold and silver leaves can also replace metallic paints. The foils add texture to the metal look, replicating gold and silver more accurately and giving a more premium look to your shin pads.
Example: A gold leaf finish adds texture on a carbon custom shin pad.
