Nylon shuttles don't feel like feathers mainly due to weight and flight differences. WHY can't they make one that flies like a feather? I'd like to know what is stopping them. Goose feathers are light and ridgid, where as plastics tend to be flexible/soft and heavy. Stiff plastic can shatter, which is a safety hazard. That's the only two material differences I can think of. Someone on playbadminton mentioned that carlton made nylon shuttles with a baloon inside, behind the cork base. This sounds like an ingenious idea. Use minimal soft nylon skirt to wrap around a tiny inflated baloon, so the nylon skirt is reinforced enough to act as though it was stiff without the safety hazard. The baloon size can be changed to alter the flight path. So what's the problem now then? how come the baloon-nylon shuttle didn't become more popular? North Americans deserve to play with feathers too!!!
i am in N. American and i play with feather. to answer your question. a balloon is also a soft structure. and if it is there between the feather, during impact, when the shuttle is suppose to collapse flat, now we have a soft balloon in between. the feel bound to be different. the difficulty with making a synthetic shuttle that flies like feather shuttle is two fold, and imho, two conflicting ones. firstly, it is to find a rigid material but have the quality of feather. imho, that is probably achievable, i am sure if someone spend the time with some sheets of carbon fiber or some high tech material, they can find something as light, thin and rigid as feathers. however, the next problem is that, no matter how good the material is, the synthetic feather will sooner or later be destroyed by the strong smashes. now the next factor comes into play, how much would manufacturing this synthetic shuttle cost and how does that compare to the cost of the feather shuttle? will it cost 10x but last 10x the time?
it is both technological and marketing barrier brl. if we make a plastic with high stiffness to weight ratio like feather, then it will break down as quick as feather. With more research we could make a plastic to last a bit longer than feather but at what R&D cost? unless it's funded by nasa, yonex can't justify this on some badminton shuttle. 2nd, feather dun last long so u have to keep buying them. If u r yonex, there's nothing wrong with that , is it?
that someone must have read my post http://www.badmintonforum.com/vb/sh...1867&perpage=10&highlight=ballon&pagenumber=4 haha, i see we both spelled balloon incorrectly.
whatever happened to the Ashaway Quills that were supposed to take over the entire plastic shuttle market, being identical in flight to feathers? flash in the pan? marketing hype?
Re: Re: Nylon vs Feather (again) We both skimped on the letters . So cooler, whatever did happen to Carlton's "new technology"? I cant find anything on it.
