DHS Plastic Ball

Back to the "shatter when struck with edges" problem, I had a session with a guy recently who managed 4 powerful edge strokes within the first 10 minutes, after that I stopped counting. With plastic balls it would have meant transferring 6 euros into the deep pockets of some people just for 10 minutes fun. Unfortunately for them and luckily for us we used celluloid balls, none of them shattered.




Edited by Mastermind - 05/06/2015 at 7:23pm

Mastermind wrote: wturber wrote: As I reported, after 215 matches, we had two balls break. Well, there are some conflicting reports, this is a fact. By the way, "two balls gone after 215 matches" statement does not make any sense to me, because it does not say anything about durability. E.g. whether those matches were played with  the same one ball (as long as it lived) or with many balls randomly taken out of a large box with 144 balls are 2 very different things.

Yes, but the ratio of reports is about 10:1 for people saying seamless balls are durable vs. about 1 for people who have had maybe one box of the balls and discovered they broke one when it hit an edge.  You have to consider the quality of the reports, which is primarily based on time and number of balls experienced.  Mastermind, we know you have an agenda, you will criticize all plastic balls, and you have no credibility on this issue because of your obvious confirmation bias, and other things you have written in the past.

The only question in my mind is whether seamless balls will maintain this quality into the future.  And I frankly have no information about that.  I am not too happy about their price increases, and it bothers me some that I have not seen any made (to my knowledge) more recently than April of 2014.

wturber wrote: As I reported, after 215 matches, we had two balls break.

Well, there are some conflicting reports, this is a fact.

By the way, "two balls gone after 215 matches" statement does not make any sense to me, because it does not say anything about durability. E.g. whether those matches were played with  the same one ball (as long as it lived) or with many balls randomly taken out of a large box with 144 balls are 2 very different things.

Mastermind wrote: I read a report on this site where a user complained about XSF durability calling them "fragile" e.g. . The user "sssandy" then replied that it might me true for 1* balls. Well, then it must be true for 3*** as well, since 3*** balls are just rounder than 1*, it is definitely not a separate production line. Anyway, even if the balls just "shatter when struck with edges", this sounds like a serious durability problem. If you hit an edge once a game, you will need a new ball once a game. A very expensive fun to me.

Baal wrote: However, I cannot guarantee that XSF-made seamless balls made more recently have the same quality.  I simply haven't had a chance to try any that I know of.  Nexy balls were fine, and may have been newer, but I don't know for sure because in violation of ITTF rules, they did not put a date of manufacture stamp on their box.  And as they say, past performance does not guarantee future performance.

Played my 1st match with the Xushaofa ball last night against a 1900 left-handed chopper/looper. Now I see why several people have said they prefer these balls over most of the seamed balls as it played pretty well. I normally win 3-0 against him, but struggled with it at first and ended up winning in 5. First thing I noticed right from the start was my bh loop wasn't as much of a weapon. I can usually loop winners off of my bh, but he was able to get back easily and chop all of them back as the spin was much less than celluloid. The other thing is that if you back up too far you will struggle as the balls flight path will drop off very quickly. Overall the ball really wasn't that bad, but if the manufacturers can keep making improvements then these balls probably will be ok. I would also point out however that he had a new ball that he practiced with that cracked pretty quickly.

Tinykin wrote: Something is causing these balls to break. I attended our National cadet masters competition where they used Stag seamless balls. No problems at all. No balls broke. A couple weeks later I was our 'Nationals', Stag again. The balls broke regularly at about 1 or 2 per match. In the semis of an under 21, 5 balls broke. I thought that that was the ultimate. But then in the next match, 6 balls broke. Interestingly, what the senior players told me was that durability depends on how the ball is hit. If the ball hits the table edge or bat (if no rubber overhang, assuming it hits the wood) then immediately it develops a soft spot. One player demonstrated by hitting the ball on the side of his bat. He hit once, no damage to ball. On the 3rd try, the ball had developed a white ring which was soft in the middle. I haven't tried it myself, as I'm too poor.

Which balls are you talking about?  The seamless?  If so, I can agree on the point about edge hits.  But I'm finding it hard to understand how you could average breaking 1-2 balls per match.  If that were the case at our tournament, we'd have needed 200-400 balls. Instead we broke 2 (one from getting stepped on).

I figured this was the best place to post my observations on our recent Arizona Closed Tournament and our use of the Nexy seamless ball supplied by NexyUSA. We had 57 players participate and 215 matches were played at levels ranging from Unrated to about 2300.

NexyUSA was our ball sponsor and supplied two dozen balls free of charge.  We purchased an additional dozen from our local NexyUSA dealer at his dealer price. As it turned out, we only needed the two dozen.

We made it a point to track the balls and what happened to them.  All told, we still have all but eight balls.  We had a grand total of two balls break.  One was stepped on and the other broke during play.  The other six balls were either lost under the bleachers, or were not returned for some reason. Separate from our Nexy balls, I observed one XSF ball break during warmup.

I received no complaints about playability or ball quality from the players, with the one exception that the tournament referee (who is also the NexyUSA supplier) pointed out that he felt a high number of the balls in the boxes were not round.  I don't have a good enough caliper to check the roundness, but by slowly rolling the balls on my granite countertop, it became clear to me that about 2/3s of the balls have a significant heavy spot.  You can observe them roll in an uneven fast/slow manner and eventually they will roll in the direction of the heavy spot.  I suspect that this is a significant part of the perception of "out of round" balls.  A heavy spot would tend to make the ball wobble when spun depending on the axis of spin.

If the manufacture can improve quality control, I'd pretty much have no complaints with this ball.  As it is, I personally don't really see a problem in play with the "wobble."  But the 3* celluloid balls I have on hand do not have this characteristic.  I also think some players will consider this to be a significant fault - even if the affect on play is more imagined than real. 





Edited by wturber - 05/04/2015 at 4:14am

Don't worry Andy!
Stiga 40+ balls are the worst thing I have ever seen from these plastic balls.
With trainings or not - I think I will always play better with the elder IDEAL balls (made in Czehoslovakia in the 80's) instead these ...how to say...innovative products from STIGA.
DHS 40+ balls are definitely the most playable balls from all these I have played to this moment, specially for me.
I have tested : Tibhar, Joola, Stiga, DHS, Palio, XushaoFa(red stamp), Yasaka.
I'll be looking to test Andro, Nittaku and Donic balls soon.

Baal wrote: Yes, Chinese seamed balls can start out playable, more or less, and round, and quickly become unplayable without breaking.

3 hour session with the Stigas last night.

Two hour session with the Stiga 40+ last night.

The first Butterfly one wasn't perfectly round but I played with it anyway.  Honestly, I didn't risk it in my first league match, but I played with it against a defender at my club who is on break from school.  It didn't play terribly, and I struggle against defense with the slower balls anyways.  Didn't break, still going strong as of now...

Yeah, I've given myself a headache just staring at the box.  I just don't think it's there.

NextLevel wrote: Look at the bottom.

Nope. Just a barcode.