Yes. When they signed deal with Loontjens/HBSC Cyclop was no more. I'm not big on sending $ to China(actually Taiwan iirc) either but a set as good as the Bronze for a c-note is a great deal. Someone on here weighed a bunch of sets and said they have best tolerances of any ball he measured.
Dynasphere Bronze balls......$100
- Thread starter garczar
- Start date
I think china but I may be confused. What I ain't confused about is a big long tale I read that the current users of the equipment put out that they weren't connected with the old manufacturer. I do hate being lied to. Maybe enough to not buy anymore dynasphere balls and I did want another set of the bronze probably. I got used to the tungstens easily enough and I have to say play is identical but I think for me the colors are worth forty dollars.
Hu
I mean I play with a cheap Chinese cue that's perfect too, so I'm testing the water before spending bigger bucks in the set I want
XinBiing Rubber is based in Taiwan. Factory may be in mainland idnk. Dynasphere never said they were made in Belgium. Says right on their site that XinBiing was involved. https://us.dynaspheres.com/about-us/
I think it was the european site that was claiming new owners well before the US site was even up. Supposedly same factory and equipment but new owners, new quality control, new people running the equipment. Seems like that ain't quite true!
I read everything on the european site well before the US site existed.
Hu
They only have the one site that i know of. They do make a few sets that are sold outside of the U.S. Championship Billiards is the U.S. distributor. Just going by what XinBiing told me Loontjens/HBSC helped design the color schemes and helps oversee the QC. Same plant,machines, same formula as the last generation of newest Cyclop balls. Competition is good imo, will keep Aramith on top of their game also i imagine.
They were marketing in europe before they ever had a us website. Months at the least, I don't know how long.
While we are hashing this around I did a little searching to find that report or website source I had read. I didn't find that because I found this first. Not only can we talk directly to the source, we can e-mail or phone him! We may get the truth, we may get half-truths or outright lies, but we will get them straight from the source!
I did find answers to a few questions that were left a little vague in the wording of places I had read earlier. The maximum difference in weight within a set we purchase will not be greater than 1.5 grams. Another place indicated a difference of plus or minus 1.5 grams which of course would be three grams. That is a maximum weight difference, not what is to be expected too so not bad!
Another tidbit, their curing oven can hold 5000 balls. I would like to know at what point a set is matched together, at what point in the process do they become a set? It would be nice if we had a better idea of hardness consistency. Judging by the several sets I have played with now I feel certain it is pretty good but equal to or greater than 56R or greater than or equal to 59R doesn't tell us a thing about consistency.
Anyway, anybody want any dynasphere USA information, we were invited to go straight to the source!
I'm a little out of school here, but whether they are using formaldehyde and carbolic acid or synthetic formaldehyde and synthetic carbolic acid, if the mixture is controlled (and it must be computer controlled), and the thermosetting process is controlled, then the density/hardness will always be the same. Chemically, phenolic resin is totally predictable.
They claim ambient temperature, humidity, perhaps other things related to these like barometric pressure or even dew points require consideration when curing the resin.
I have fooled with fiberglass resins a little bit long ago. My experience with two part paints that are similar was that over 95% of the time they behaved as advertised. Once in awhile they took a left turn. Supposed to be fully cured in 24 hours, I have seen the paint still wet thirty days after painting. I also was getting orange peel bad enough that I had to add literally a few drops of retarder to the mixed paint. Finished spraying, looked great! Opened my paint booth the next morning and it seemed the entire paint job was on the floor! I have seen the same thing happen to far more experienced painters than myself and my shop foreman. A heated booth overnight and the paintjob on the floor!
I don't know if you are right or the people at Dynasphere. They may just be bragging about scoring the services of an expert they mention. One thing I do know, I don't 100% trust anything that has to "kick" to work! I am not thrilled with curing batches of five thousand at a time especially if they aren't mated sets at this point. On the other hand, their oven looks very familiar. I have insulated and hung the sheet metal on many a pot like that!
Hu
I was real curious about phenolic resin balls. I used to cut them open and play with the saw dust. I tried to break the phenolic dowel out of the rest of the ball, you know, just playing to see if I could understand a little bit more than I knew before. I started studying the chemistry and even got in touch with the chemistry dept. at U of F. Phenolic resin production can be controlled nowadays far better than it could back when they were manufacturing balls at Albany Billiard Ball Co. in the late 40s and earlier 50s. But even then, the consistency of the chemical reaction was a direct result of the chemicals and not any other man made interference. In other words, if you put the compounds in the way you are supposed to, it will do the rest, and it will do it over and over again. Heat is used to keep phenolic resin "plastic", another word for "malleable." When warm, and under pressure which is needed in the injection molding portion of production, phenolic resin is slightly swollen and as it cools is shrinks. For instance, the shrinking creates the mechanical bond that holds the white dowel (where the numbers are placed) within the the ball.
They got this phenolic ball process down to a science. It's been around for a long time. Even though the modernization of the compounds and processes have made manufacturing easier, at its heart it is a really simple thing. Phenolic resin products can withstand an immense amount of abuse. You could take a cue ball and put it a bucket of water and let it sit for a year and it wouldn't hurt it. Density/Hardness is really not an issue, because the chemicals do what they are going to do all by themselves, and, if all the production variables are controlled they way they should be, they do it the same way every time.
They got this phenolic ball process down to a science. It's been around for a long time. Even though the modernization of the compounds and processes have made manufacturing easier, at its heart it is a really simple thing. Phenolic resin products can withstand an immense amount of abuse. You could take a cue ball and put it a bucket of water and let it sit for a year and it wouldn't hurt it. Density/Hardness is really not an issue, because the chemicals do what they are going to do all by themselves, and, if all the production variables are controlled they way they should be, they do it the same way every time.
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https://forums.azbilliards.com/thre...phere-any-reviews-on-dynasphere.513531/page-3 The balls tested here had tighter toler. than Aramith. All i know is they make a good product that will give Aramith some competition. The US dist. is Championship Billiards. https://us.dynaspheres.com/contact/
I bought (localish billiard store) and played with a set of the bronze today with nary a compliant. I'd call them a bargain at a bill!
Hey, Homey, do you remember St. Elmo?
I remember there being movie in with that in the title in 1980's, "St. Elmo's Fire", but that's the extent of what I know there. Why?
I am less afraid of the weight or size being a teeny bit off than the hardness and durability of the cueball and the other balls. The cueballs of those sets show some surface lines showing up and have chalk stick to them a lot more than the Aramith. It took a few years for the Cyclop balls to start cracking, these have not been around that long.
Cyclop had some issues early on. Haven't heard of any issues on their later stuff. I know someone who plays the Bronze set all time and he hasn't had any more chalking issues than with the previous sets the room had. These balls are in play all over the world and if they have any major problems we probably would have heard of it already.
The Tidewater of Virginia was my homeplace. From the early part of the 20th Century up until the mid 1980s, there was a room on the second floor of the building at 112 Brooke Ave. in Norfolk, Va. Its name was St. Elmo Billiards. It was a very special place. Maybe it was before your time.
It was, Boxcar. It was I moved to Tidewater in June of 1995 and left in January of 2009. I did get to the original Q-Masters at five points (the one at Waterside too) and still think of the current one as QII sometimes. It still tops my most missed spots from my time back East, though.
Cool old pic!
Cool old pic!
looks like the sets that sell in the us come with those rack templates
Dynasphere Gold Ball Set
The Dynasphere Gold Ball Set is an outstanding pool ball set for all billiard players alike. This set contains one cue ball, 7 striped and 8 solids as well
looks like the sets that sell in the us come with those rack templates
Dynasphere Gold Ball Set
The Dynasphere Gold Ball Set is an outstanding pool ball set for all billiard players alike. This set contains one cue ball, 7 striped and 8 solids as wellwww.seyberts.com
The lower end sets too? They had just entered the US market when I first bought the dynasphere balls and their marketing has been evolving quite a bit since then.
My first set came in a factory sealed box but with no template. This was before the US site was up and the european site seemed to indicate that even the lower end sets came with the templates. Even at the excellent price if my set was supposed to have a template with it, I wanted one! I ran the rabbit a bit and gave the distributor time to talk back and forth with the factory. Different marketing in the US, no template. When the US site came online a month or two later it reflected the differences.
They were marketing under different names and slightly different packages. The comparison that comes to mind for me was a fishing reel I was fond of, with a left hand retrieve. You usually pay a few bucks more for a reel with a left hand retrieve. Instead, this company had a "free" spare spool with the right hand retrieve. The left hand retrieve was the same price, no "free" spare spool! During the time period I bought four of the dynasphere ball sets, Tungsten and Bronze sets did not include a template. I think the Tungsten set in particular is being put on the market with very little factory mark up to get some dynasphere balls out in the marketplace. I suspect pricing will increase once the balls are better known. My guess and why I bought spares now.
Hu