OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Yeah, apparently a lot of these Kingniks were actually over 41mm! So there's clearly a problem, either with that batch in particular, or the quality control. My main tests are done, and I'll post the results soon - I still haven't done the horizontal sway test.

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Main Setups: Giant Dragon Kris II, DHS H3 Neo, Yasaka Anti Power or Giant Dragon Kris II, DHS H3 Neo, Dr Neubauer Bison
Backups: Yinhe N-9, DHS Hurricane 3 Provincial (Blue Sponge, no. 22), Yasaka Anti Power or Yinhe N-9, DHS Hurricane 3 Neo, Butterfly Super Anti

Help me find a new blade please!

Only self-proclaimed unofficial spin doctor of OOAK. Call me Joe or musicfreak
The author of How Spin Works. The Official How Spin Works Thread. How Spin Works goes to India! See my 3D Printed/Laser Cut blade experiment blog.

This is the latest list of approved balls.

http://www.old.ittf.com/stories/Picture ... 3_2017.pdf

Joola sells two plastic 40+ balls with their name on it. The Joola Flash is seamless and is made by XSF, it has an all-blue label and it says China on the ball. The Super P has a seam, is made of cellulose acetate, and is a re-branded version of the plastic ball DHS has been selling for last few years. Even though it sometimes says Germany on the ball, they are made in China. Those two balls play very differently.

Balls with a large P? Probably Palio. A good seamless ball. There aren't any that I know of that have just a P though (certainly none from Tibhar).

On the ITTF website above, the approval code for each ball has four numbers at the end in this form XX/YY that signify the day the balls were approved.

The plastic seamed balls with middle-2016 approval dates are probably ABS balls like the new DHS D40+ (and the Nittaku Premium that came out in 2014). And so it looks like quite a few companies will be selling those pretty soon. This includes Double Fish, Donic, and TSP. Interestingly, Nittaku will soon be selling something they call the NSD40+, which will be an ABS ball made in China by DHS. Even dating back to celluloid days, Nittaku always had an arrangement whereby they would re-brand some balls made by DHS (those were always cheaper) and it looks like that will continue. You could tell the difference on the ball and box by whether it said Japan or China on it.

Sometimes balls are approved quite a few months before they are generally available to be purchased. The new DHS D40+ was approved over a year and half ago, and for most of that time only the CNT had access to them, and even now you can only buy they from Chinese websites (for another month or so, then TT11 will have them).

Edit added: This older ITTF site has pictures of the balls too. http://old.ittf.com/_front_page/ittf1.a ... gory=balls
You can see that sometimes the same ball is sold by the same company with more than one label (based on approval code), but latest version of the T3 Bulletin says ITTF is not going to allow that anymore.

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Butterfly Viscaria Black tag
2.2 mm Nexy Karis M on FH and BH

As an aside - is there a way to get directly to the equipment pages without having to navigate back to the old site??

Iskandar

According to this page (link) it is the other way around. Kingnik is the maker's brand (the maker is Shanghai Minkow Co.), and XuShaoFa is the rebranding. This may also explain why Kingnik is cheaper.

I've had a training ball 'Three Star P' just recently with a big P on it, it's a rebranded seamless at about $50 for 144 balls afair, similar to Joola Flip.
Good chance it's the same P-ball I've seen at the tournament early in January/

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Red is blogging here >> http://ooakforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=30522

It has been hard to find the truth about the actual relationship between Minkow and XSF. Is Minkow the OEM for XSF or is it a separate operation that also produces seamless balls, along with many other kinds of balls, including celluloid (I have no secret knowledge but very strongly suspect Minkow is the OEM, as this post suggests). Some of the confusion came from a person who was posting here for awhile by the name of ssandy who claimed to be a representative of XSF (very likely the daughter of Xu Shao Fa himself, who runs a lot of his TT business operations). It is the internet. Who knows?

The Kingnik balls I got to try, just one box of their premium version, were exactly the same as XSF. I do know that the way a lot of this stuff works is the company that puts their name on balls is responsible for the QC checking. By the way, in 2014 nearly every plastic ball was considerably over the ITTF size/weight limits, and ITTF was allowing relaxed standards because they were desperate to have some plastic balls on the market. So the Kingniks were not alone in being over the weight/size limits, although bear in mind they have always sold two brands of seamless balls). The ssandy person made a number of posts here crowing about at some point that XSF was the first company to actually meet all of the final XSF standards (the ones we have now). And that was true until Nittaku Premium 40+ came out, which were actually on the complete other end of the scale (at 2.68 grams, almost too light).

By the way, I agree with pretty much everything those Equipment Junkie guys wrote about balls.

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Butterfly Viscaria Black tag
2.2 mm Nexy Karis M on FH and BH

Most of the seamless balls sold at that price range in the US are training balls. People here may have seen the IPong balls and other seamless sold as 1*. Because they aren't approved by ITTF, they don't show up on any of their websites. I find them all really strange and don't like to use them for really, anything. I haven't seen one with a big P, so can't say for sure if it is the same thing but the price suggests it.

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Butterfly Viscaria Black tag
2.2 mm Nexy Karis M on FH and BH

http://www.minkow.com.cn/Premium-KINGNI ... seamless-3




Minkow factory just launched a new product. The KINGNIK PREMIUM ball (with seam) made of a new material, most probably of some ABS derivative.

Manufacturers still keep trying for a better material, and players all hopeful for a better ball.

Even more interesting:

http://www.minkow.com.cn/Balls





Whatever their relationship with XSF, they WERE making celluloid 40mm balls, and had a lot of equipment for making seamed balls. And they claimed to be OEM'ing balls for DHS (and Stiga, and Tibhar, etc. etc. etc.). So I suspect they were continuing to use their existing production line to produce seamed 40+ balls all this while for DHS and everyone else regardless of what was going on with the seamless balls they were (are) selling. When DHS switched to ABS... guess where those balls were made?? The "DHS Factory" in the video looked very much like the Minkow factory (same paint scheme anyhow..). If this is true, it's pretty obvious then what these Kingnik ABS balls are.

Iskandar

I do bother little about the production source, I much more interested of the newest Kingnik Premium performance in play as compared to other plastic products.

And what is even more interesting to know, Who is the supplier of the raw plastic material for making Minkow's and DHS's balls. And do they really vary the plastic compositions for different ball brands ?

I'll bet they're exactly the same as DHS's balls. You will eventually see these balls being sold under a dozen different names - Andro, Donic, Stiga, Tibhar, etc. And it'll also mean we'll see orange and bicolor training balls from DHS, if not three star balls right away. Who makes the raw material? There are dozens, probably hundreds of companies making raw and blended ABS. As for varying the formula for different brands - why would they do it if 1) they're all being made on the same production line, and 2) a lot of testing and research went into getting the perfect blend? If the balls are made on a different production line (e.g. the Double Fish ABS balls) then of course the blend might be different. Probably from a totally different supplier.

Anyone notice the ABS 38mm and 44mm balls?? And the colored 40+ ones? They're still advertising the old celluloid balls (including Double Circle) but I thought I'd gotten the last of those.

Iskandar