US 5,106,094 · Granted 1992-04-21
How Salomon Revolutionized Golf Club Design with Hollow Heads
Imagine a golf club head that's mostly empty inside, with a removable face plate bolted on. Salomon's invention fills that hollow space with special material to bond the face to the body, making clubs stronger and easier to manufacture. It's a simple but clever way to build better golf clubs.
The plain-English version
What it protects
The claim covers a golf club head with a hollow body, a detachable cover plate that forms the striking surface, and a filler material injected into the interior space to bond the cover plate to the body. What's protected here is specifically the combination of the hollow construction, the internal partitions that control how much filler is needed, and the method of installing the filler material through a sleeve before attaching the shaft.
Why it matters
Before this patent, golf club heads were made as solid or simply welded pieces. Salomon's approach—using injected filler material to bond a removable face plate to a hollow body—made manufacturing faster, cheaper, and more flexible. It allowed manufacturers to experiment with weight distribution and materials without completely redesigning the tooling, which gave companies a competitive edge in the 1990s golf equipment boom.
Real-world use
Every time a golfer picks up a modern driver or fairway wood with a removable face plate, they're likely using a design descended from this hollow-body, filler-bonded concept that Salomon pioneered.
Original USPTO abstract
A golf club head, and a process of manufacturing a golf club head, in which the golf club head includes a body having an interior space, a cover plate for attachment to the body, the cover plate having a surface forming a golf ball striking surface, and a quantity of material within at least a portion of the interior space, for assisting in securing the cover plate to the body. The quantity of material can be a filler material which is injected or poured, prior to installing the shaft on the club head, through sleeve which communicates with the interior space of the body of the head. Further, the golf club head may also include an internal transverse surface which can be defined, for example, by a separate partition which divides the interior space of the hollow body, so as to reduce the quantity of the filler material, and a member to hold the cover plate in place prior to the introduction of the filler material into the hollow body, for example, a member which is compressed between the internal transverse surface and the cover plate.
Patent details
- Publication number
- US 5,106,094
- Filing date
- 1990-05-31
- Grant date
- 1992-04-21
- Assignee
- Salomon S.A.
- Inventor(s)
- DESBIOLLES; JACQUES, MERMET; DOMINIQUE
- CPC class
- A63B53/04
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