New Yinhe balls

Are they still seamless?

Edit, just checked on ITTF website, they are listed as seamless.  Don't know what is new about them.

If they would come out with an orange 40+ instead of just adding a letter yinhe would take half the market.

The Yinhe balls Cole sold ALREADY had great life (Unless you did a power stroke and caught the edge of racket). 6 of his Yinhe balls would last several months of daily play (if no one stepped on them) (Yes, I had that happen twice). This is WAY better than quality Celluloid balls, which a 6 pack MIGHT make it a few weeks of daily play a few hours.

cole_ely wrote: Yes. I'm told they're more durable. She said they were the international version. That sounds suspiciously like different pricing.

Baal wrote: Count me as skeptical. I suspect it is a way to justify elevated pricing.

BH-Man wrote: The Yinhe balls Cole sold ALREADY had great life (Unless you did a power stroke and caught the edge of racket). 6 of his Yinhe balls would last several months of daily play (if no one stepped on them) (Yes, I had that happen twice). This is WAY better than quality Celluloid balls, which a 6 pack MIGHT make it a few weeks of daily play a few hours. If his new ball lasts even LONGER, then more power to players.

Well that's a shame. Our club uses Yinhe balls. Their quality is good and the price is really solid. Sounds like part of that is changing now.

Baal wrote: AndySmith wrote: cole_ely wrote: I noticed no drop in quality for yinhe 3*. I take it you did? Not personally no.  We bought a load of XSF last year and they're still going strong.  I've tried recent batches of Joola Flash and Xiom seamless and they've been excellent too.  But recent forum reports have been a bit worrying: http://mytabletennis.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=75587&title=defective-batch-of-xsf-balls People saying that 30-40% are out of round, out of the box.  And some are squashed, obviously.  ;-) It is possible that there is a systematic issue but I think it is equally possible that this was one single defective manufacturing run from just one of the companies that markets seamless balls (or more likely,  a willingness from XSF to sell balls they know are not round).  I don't think there are enough posts here with specific information on manufacture dates from different brands to know for sure. In fact, the only bad seamless balls I have seen were from XSF.  So far there is no report that other companies have accepted to put such out of round balls into their boxes.  So until we hear otherwise, my assumption is that Yinhe or Nexy or Xiom (etc.) are fine.

haggisv wrote: I thought the Nexy balls were made by XSF...this is according to XSF anyway. I suspect all the different reports on the quality of balls if simply variation in batches. Running different machines to make 2 different quality of balls does not make economic sense, and neither does cherry picking balls for specific brands.

I agree with Jay that it is quite likely that modern production machines would allow for some change in plastic formula.

Alternatively, the idea that there is some significant change in material could be more marketing than real, but at the same time Yinhe, Nexy, and others might simply refuse to accept balls that are out of a certain set of specifications, whereas XSF may be willing to do it. 

As with Jay's previous post, this is also pure speculation.

Nexy himself once posted here (I think or maybe it was OOAK) that while his balls are seamless, they are in fact not identical to XSF.  I was wondering at the time if that seemed plausible, but he ought to know.  I had some Nexy balls once which seemed perfectly good to me, but I honestly can't say that I recall any difference in how they played.

USATT doesn't approve balls as far as I know, but each individual brand of balls has to undergo a separate ITTF approval process.  You can find the balls that are approved on the ITTF website.

smackman wrote: So has anyone read this? Instead of  Xu Shaofa being the maker of balls, it is just a ball made by Guangzhou Hefu Sport Equipment Company which includes 20 or so other balls http://www.ittf.com/_front_Page/ittf_full_story1.asp?ID=44473&Category=s_club&Competition_ID=& My wife just arrived back from China with Yinhe's  2016 catalog and no mention of s40+ but magazine could be 6 months old now anyway?

Tried the yinhe 40+ and i t really was good and durable like nexy

Here is another twist to things.

Shanghai Minkow, who make seamless balls, Kingnik being the house label, is located in Shanghai.  Here is their website, which indicates that they clearly have manufacturing capabilities for seamless and seamed balls and where they specifically state that they are the OEM for many other brands:  http://www.minkow.com.cn/

But Guangzhou Hefu Sports Equipment Company is located in the Panyu district of  the city of Guangzhou (the very large capital city of Guangdong province, in South China across from Hong Kong).  This is very far (~ 1,500 km) from Shanghai.  The only English language web presence for Guangzhou Hefu related to sports equipment seems limited to sites about import transactions for seamless balls into the US, such as this one:  http://en.52wmb.com/s-guangzhou_hefu_sport_eqiupment/8066705   The only thing I could learn from clicking some of the links on that site is that Guangzhou Hefu exports balls to the US through the port of Newark, and that they created a company in the US called Hitoss LLC (High Toss, get it, the most distinguishing feature of Xu Shaofa when he was a player) to protect their trademark etc.  XSF has a website in English that mentions their balls, and Mr. Xu Shaofa himself, but says nothing about where they make the balls, but not Guangzhou Hefu.

So what does it all mean?  Are there now two factories making these balls?  Certainly it seems possible by this time that the necessary machines to make seamless balls could be in more than one place, but could this explain differences in ball quality that we seem to see with XSF these days?  Can this explain maybe how different materials could be used at different places? 

The one thing that makes no sense to me is that you would make the balls in Shanghai but then export them out of Guangzhou (since 2011 the Port of Shanghai is currently the world's busiest container port).  So I am leaning towards the idea that seamless balls are now made in more than one place.

I don't know the answers to the questions this all raises, and my guess is that they can only come from someone who can speak and read Chinese. 

Maybe zeio can figure it out.