another thread asked how long a racket usually lasts and a lot of people, myself included, had mentioned it would last a long time until there's a clash in a doubles game, which reminded me of the one clash i had with an RSL racket that's one piece down to the cone. from my limited experience i've only seen not even a handful of rackets made that way. now there is virtually no racket made as one piece, is that true? if not, who still makes "one-piece" rackets? i would love to get more info on it, thank you!!!
Carlton used to have loads of racquets made as "one piece". I remember the old powerflow racquets in the 90's were laregly "one piece". But imo there's no real advantage of having an integrated cone.
yes i have a carlton powerflo G85 that's one piece down to the cone. for some reason, when do a backhand drive, it's more responsive with the integrated cone than the conventional way where the shaft and the cone is separate. thought?
Wherever you have a break in materials, or a change from one component to another, you create a feature where you change the resonance of the object. I think rackets have evolved the way that they have so that the shock of hitting the shuttle doesn't resonate all the way to your hand. That's a big reason they still use wood for the handles, because it's light and has good damping properties. As for the 'one piece' method, rackets don't break at the T, so it doesn't matter how the T is constructed from a strength point-of-view. Generally what happens is that the head and shaft is glued together using a 'T' shaped insert, and than there is a finishing layer of carbon binding it all together. Once vacuumed and autoclaved, it's a homogeneous structure, so it makes no difference to the strength, handling or responsiveness of the design as a whole.
So does the shaft morph into the cone which morphs into the handle - ie: no joints? Seems the most interesting part of the racket isn't actually in the photo!
Yep, shaft morphs into the cone which was meant by "one piece" in this case . Thought I'd show you the pic. thinking you might have imagined something else here. Remember them from when I just started, thought they looked pretty awesome but can imagine they might perhaps have been too fragile as a reason for their disappearance (not that I have heard or remember comments on that) in my time away from the sport.
They shouldn't be fragile, they should be stronger than any other method because there's no stress-risers. The question is whether the design can be adequately damped. Actually the real question is whether the production costs can be amortised within standard sell-prices, which I suspect would be 'no'. Current production methods are pretty low-skilled / high margin, all things considered.
