Defective batch of XSF balls

It is a norm now . You can have one box lasted you over 30 sessions, then the next box will only last you 6 sessions. 

Edited by Egghead - 05/22/2016 at 3:17pm

im disappointed that all 12 balls except maybe 1 or 2 were defected, if it was other way around i would be okay with that.

Perhaps they are fakes? 

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a1z09.2.0.0.y9yPUc&id=520862059362&_u=m1ltlhe05842

MLfan wrote: Perhaps they are fakes?  My XuShaoFa balls don't have that label, and I bought mine in China.

As things stand now, there is only one factory in the world that can make the seamless balls, so I doubt they are fakes the way we normally think of the word.  By the way, the ones with the red label that came in the tube instead of the box were the first ones I ever had, and they were really good balls! 

I think QC has declined since then.  I find XSF balls with date stamps ending in AF are not very round anymore.

XGAD balls are from 2014.  My experience with balls of that age has been excellent.

This makes pretty good sense given that only one factory can make seamless balls. 

In other words, if there are only so many of the round ones to go around, and finite production capacity, the factory can charge more for them, so the various companies now marketing seamless are forced to accept an every higher percentage of lower standard balls or they would have to pay more for the round ones (and then pass on the costs to buyers).  And now there are a lot more companies selling seamless.  When they first came out it was pretty much only Palio and XSF.

Presumably the factory always made a certain percentage of egg-shaped balls and maybe a year ago XSF would not sell them but now they do.

Whatever the reason, the end result to the buyer is that quality of the ball they receive is reduced. That's simply another way of saying QC is reduced.

@42andbackpains
You don't say.
At the club tournament we have this week, I notices i can see the ball actually wobbling in the air.
Man, My vision is not very good if i can see it that means the displacemnet is really big.
These are XSF club balls (meaning 1 star and most recent directly from XSF), have not experienced this with any or our 3star premium balls.

I thought my eyes have problem, I saw it several times while I was playing, i can't believe my eyes.
back to lab to do more testing on ball roundness/


Edited by rosecitytt - 05/22/2016 at 3:40pm

Trained today again and broke 2 XSF balls but from a different badge which were round. It seems like if you clip the ball with the racket edge its 99% most likely going to be broken.

Switched to NP40+ and they do play as expected. No weird bounce, just feels abit like a rock compared to XSF, looping doesn't have a weird feel compared to the SHA or BTY40+, good sound as usual.

One guy who visits my house has a special knack for killing Kingniks (same as XuShaoFa) 3 stars with his forehand loop when we practice. But I notice his boosted rubber significantly overlap the edge of the blade. Kingniks still die to the tune of a few each session. Seems obvious that the plastic material they're using simply can't deflect very far and snap back (like celluloid). Deflect and crack. And unless they change the material, I suspect that's always going to be the case and not really a matter of QC. (Roundness, on the other hand, is a matter of QC.) Luckily I have a hundred or more to spare...

Edited by sandiway - 05/22/2016 at 8:13pm

I agree. I think I would be ok with them breaking against edges and such but balls with soft spots (dents) make the game unplayable completely. They also tend to just shatter in the air when hit normally.

Dear TT11 people,

It's not just balls they shipped to you.  A clubmate bought some balls with the same problem from another vendor.

If everybody starts complaining and shipping balls back to XSF maybe they will improve the quality control.

We had our tournament this weekend and used 2 dozen G40s. 2 to 3 cracked and maybe a couple were wobbly. I noticed the wobbly issue when some of the higher rated players came back to switch the balls. Overall i can say the G40s are in the middle of the pack. Not Great and Not Bad.

lineup32 wrote: Early adoptee's of the plastic ball were positive about the seamless balls including ITTF that gave them the OK.  Many players are still reading the early reviews and heard on the street how great these balls were many saying they were better then the old 40.  Recently a club mate told me how the seamless ball had the same bounce as the Nittaku 40+ three star he read it somewhere but after a quick show and tell he changed his opinion.

wturber wrote: lineup32 wrote: Early adoptee's of the plastic ball were positive about the seamless balls including ITTF that gave them the OK.  Many players are still reading the early reviews and heard on the street how great these balls were many saying they were better then the old 40.  Recently a club mate told me how the seamless ball had the same bounce as the Nittaku 40+ three star he read it somewhere but after a quick show and tell he changed his opinion.  I went to a fair bit of trouble testing this a while back, and there is no way that the seamless ball bounces the same as the NP40+. In my testing and pretty much by all other accounts, it bounces higher.  I also tested to see if the seamless balls were pressurized.  They were not. The NP40+ bounces the same as celluloid in the ITTF drop test, but it feels quite different than celluloid. Some people take the ITTF bounce test as evidence that the NP40+ ball is most like celluloid, but I think that is overgeneralizing from one rather limited characteristic.

My observations agree with Jay in every detail.

The G40+ also dent without cracking.   The uneven surface can have interesting side effects.