Thursday, June 21, 2012

New Lures Made in USA Will Change Fishing Forever




CASTLE ROCK, CO– Fishermen, take note!  That colorful fishing lure in the attractive packaging on the store shelf has little or no appeal to a fish in the water, especially as the lure goes deeper and deeper in the water.

Why is this?  Many fishermen – and women who fish too – may not know that fish actually see in color and use this ability to hunt for food.  However, the deeper a fishing lure sinks into water, the patterns and colors change with the result that the lure loses iridescence, color and contrast, makes it less attractive to the fish.  As an example, the most brilliant red turns to almost black at 45 feet under water.

Armed with this information, Robert Senter of Castle Rock, CO, an avid fisherman, was perplexed with his inability to catch as many fish as he expected or wanted.  With his degree in chemistry, years of experience in the medical supply field and knowledge of polymers, sought to find out why.

Today, with one patent in hand and several others pending, he is confident that he has a line of products that show promise to change – and improve – fishing forever.  Mr. Senter heads up a company, R2 Innovations, LLC, whose Actiglo® fishing lures, all engineered, manufactured and assembled in the USA.  What makes them different and highly effective, is they utilize proprietary mixtures of polymers with transparent colorants and light emitting diodes to maintain colorability iridescence in any light condition and at any depth in the water without obscuring the light source.  Plus the new lures can achieve the buoyancy at the specific water depths desired.

What sets Actiglo lures apart from others is that they also use transparent non-bleeding colorizers and reflective in the proprietary polymers that when coupled to a light emitting diode (LED), it creates  natural colors and iridescence to the fishing lure.  The result is a line of engineered and manufactured lures, hard bodied jigs, swim baits and spinnerbaits that mimic the natural color, color pattern and iridescence of live bait fish.

The new Actiglo fishing lures successfully overcome not only the loss of sunlight at any depth fished, but also bait color degradation in cloudy, murky or dirty water and adverse weather conditions.  This means the color and appeal of fishing with these lures at dawn, dusk or at night or even ice fishing remain constant while the visually appealing aspects of other fishing lures are diminished or completely lost.  Small batteries that activate illumination system achieve the ability to maintain the color and other features attractive to fish, no matter what the depth, or natural lighting conditions.  Iridescence within the core of the lures can be deactivated by reversing the position of the battery, allowing the lure to be fished with or without its illumination capabilities.

Actiglo’s founder and product inventor Senter claims to be the first in the marketplace to not only acknowledge these opportunities and challenges, but to resolve them with new lures that really work.  He has successfully put together a special team of materials experts, designers and molders to turn his idea into actual products that would and could mimic the natural appearance of live bait.

Materials Distributor and Technical Advisors, Others Help Actiglo Find a Solution

According to Senter, the team included:
1.  Materials distributor (soft thermoplastic elastomers– TPEs) and elastomeric materials technical advisors Alliance Polymers and Services (APS), in Romulus.  APS and specifically partners Roger Huarng and Stephane Morin are well-known for their and their firm’s ability to suggest materials and find molding solutions for product challenges.  The materials criteria for the new Actiglo lures included:
·         A better material than polycarbonate that has a tendency to yellow
·         Specific gravities to enable the lures to be produced to either float or sink to specific depths
·         Refractory indexes to ensure the colors or patterns would remain bright and appealing to the fish
·         A soft touch feel, but with a Shore A hardness that would make the lures soft and flexible and a tensile strength of 700 – 7000 psi tens to make the lures literally bite resistant
·         Optical characteristics that would mimic the color, color pattern and iridescence of popular water baits
·         No plastisols or other harmful ingredients
·         Good colorability and moldability
2.   Engineering was assigned to WayeGo Design LLC headed by Wayne Gonnering, also a skilled and avid angler.  Mr. Gonnering is responsible for current and future lure designs, CAD drawings in IGS, STEP and Al file formats and coordinates manufacturing tolerances for component parts and injection molds.
3.  Molding was awarded to ISO rated High Performance Engineering, Colorado Springs, CO, under the direction of Hyrum Anderson.  Mr. Anderson is the chief mechanical engineer and Director at HPE high grade metal aloe injection lure molds and polymer component parts.
The team and their respective companies each and all have a penchant for having the products be as “green” and environmentally friendly as possible. No Actiglo lure has any lead in it, a metal that is hazardous and used by most fishermen to “sink” their lures. The line of Actiglo products use different polymers in different products to enable and allow each lure to sink to pre-specified levels owing to their specific gravity (45 – 2,000 feet). By way of example, an Actiglo lure package marked 25’ will sink to that depth and stay there.

According to Actiglo’s Bob Senter, “It is every fisherman’s goal to catch larger fish, and of course for the lures they use not only to work, but be durable. Our products were far from an overnight invention and took many years of trial and error, from materials selection to design to molding of the final products. It was because of the team effort that we, and our products, literally ‘saw the light.’ We expect the Actiglo line to soon be in leading fishing supply stores soon and thus on its way to change fishing, forever.”

Information on the Actiglo lures can be obtained by contacting: R2 Innovations, LLC, 343 Morningstar Way, Castle Rock, CO 80108. Tel: 303-808-1705. Email: rls@mho.com. Web: www.actiglolures.com.

Information on the soft elastomeric materials used in Actiglo lures can be obtained by contacting: Marketing Department, Alliance Polymers and Services LLC (APS), 30735 Cypress Road, Suite 400, Romulus, MI 48174. Tel: 734-710-6700. Fax: 734-710-6715. Email: sales@apstpe.com. Web: www.apstpe.com.

Information on the design firm may be obtained by contacting: WayneGo Design LLC, P.O. Box 70, Evergreen, CO 80437. Tel: 720-542-8324. Email: waynego_design@comcast.net.

Molding information may be obtained by contacting: High Performance Engineering, 650 Elkton Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80907. Tel: 719-473-9989. Web: www.hpeweb.com.



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Thursday, June 14, 2012

Want to learn more about thermoplastic elastomers?

Want to learn more about thermoplastic elastomers?  Make plans to attend the TPE TOPCON sponsored by the Society of Plastics Engineers, Inc. in Akron, OH in September.  Go to www.4SPE.org/conferences/spe-tpe-topcon for details and to register.