ing,’” John Pizzuti recalled. “I said ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘Well, there’s other ways to shape and form steel, and if it’s taking you a long time and it’s very labor intensive, you don’t think you’re JRLQJ WR EH DEOH WR WXUQ D SURÀW EHFDXVH it’s taking you 30, 60 days to build one of these things, you need to change your method of manufacturing.’” Pizzuti listened to his mother, did his diligence and found investment casting. Based in Birmingham, Michi- gan, Pizzuti searched the internet for local facilities and in the fall of 2014 happened upon Acra Cast (Bay City, Michigan) a small 20-employee invest- ment caster.


A full helmet is shown, complete with a visor and Zuti face mask.


Together, Pizzuti and Acra Cast are working to introduce a new kind of mask to football. It looks cool, and more importantly, they say it’s safer, which would be a milestone in football safety and maybe preserve the future of America’s favorite sport.


But before that, a lot of work was nec- essary.


wouldn’t allow him to do that. His mother, Pamela Pizzuti, had an- other idea.


The two sat down together and talked about the problems John was having. He laid out his issues with the designs and, as the cliché goes, this mother knew best.


“She said to me, ‘Well, you need to change your method of manufactur-


MELTING POINT


Pizzuti came to Richard Singer, pres- ident, Acra Cast, with some sketches and an idea but it needed much more development. Singer knew they needed something in the 3-D format and sent 3L]]XWL WR DQ HQJLQHHULQJ ÀUP LQ 6DJLQDZ Michigan, that had performed some analysis work for Acra Cast.


After Pizzuti did that and came back 11


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