This is just a rebranding, the parent company acquired the aluminum cylinder business of both Worthington and later Luxfer; doing business under the brand name Metal Impact.
In late Summer 2022, Thunderbird LLC has rebranded its Metal Impact business to bring clarity to its product offerings in Illinois, Mississippi and North Carolina.
Thunderbird LLC has rebranded its Metal Impact business to bring clarity to its product offerings in Illinois, Mississippi and North Carolina.
www.gasworld.com
According to the Thunderbird Metals website,
Introducing two new websites, one powerful brand
"Metal Impact is now doing business under the name Thunderbird Metals. This re-branding initiative reflects the strength and vitality achieved through our parent company, Thunderbird LLC. We remain committed to customer service and make ongoing investments in our technologies, expertise, and processes to ensure we efficiently produce superior products for our customers. With multiple state-of-the-art facilities, we are positioned to meet and exceed our customers' wide-ranging supply needs."
Their SCUBA cylinders now falls under their "Thunderbird Cylinders" business.
SCUBA cylinders that are reliable under high pressures
We are informed by XS SCUBA, the sole US distributor for Thunderbird SCUBA Cylinders, that going forward the crown of the cylinders will be marked with TBC instead of MIP. Quoting from our copyrighted article "How to Select a SCUBA Tank"
How to Select a SCUBA Tank | Dive Gear Express®
"The cylinder market has been in considerable upheaval in recent years as the result of bankruptcies, acquisitions, mergers and plant closings. It can get pretty difficult to follow... the exact same aluminum scuba cylinder, produced using the same tooling, raw materials and workmanship has been produced by a succession of different company names: first Hy-Mark, then Piper, then Worthington, then Metal Impact, which has now rebranded as Thunderbird which is distributed by both XS Scuba and Sea Pearls (which is owned by XS Scuba).
Just a handful of companies currently produce SCUBA tanks for the U.S. market. Only Catalina and Thunderbird manufacture aluminum scuba tanks in the US. (In March 2021, Thunderbird announced it has expanded production capacity by acquiring the Luxfer aluminum gas cylinders operations.) We've seen some AL-80 Chinese manufactured aluminum scuba tanks exported for the U.S. market under the Cyl-Tec brand name. Faber of Italy manufactures and exports steel SCUBA tanks for the U.S. market under the Blue Steel and XS Scuba brand names. We detect no difference in quality among the products from any of the SCUBA cylinder manufacturers. That's as expected, given the cylinders are all manufactured to DOT specifications and each cylinder must pass inspection and testing by an independent agency.
We have found the Thunderbird (formerly known as Metal Impact) brand offers a little better price and availability, with no compromise on quality, as compared to Catalina and Luxfer. Experienced divers have always preferred the Luxfer over the Catalina because the Luxfer cylinder offered better buoyancy and trim characteristics for stage and sidemount applications. The good news is we find the Thunderbird cylinders to have equal or slightly better buoyancy and trim than even the old Luxfers. Faber is currently the only option for those divers seeking recently manufactured galvanized steel scuba tanks."
Essentially the old Metal Impact brand name is gone and Dive Gear Express has recently updated their website to reference the new Thunderbird Cylinders brand...
Only aluminum tanks on this page, or visit Steel Tanks (Cylinders). For rebreathers, visit CCR Cylinders & Valves
www.divegearexpress.com
thunderbird-cylinders.com
