CB Testing

The second set of runs where the ramp was elevated 2 inches was close to the same speed of a lag.
Looks like about a one diamond spread, which is pretty huge IMO (if that's the random factor before you account for human error). I suppose it's applicable to long positional play too, except that you might intuitively adjust for how the ball and table are playing, during a game.
 
This is a much more basic version of the pinewood derby.
Lots of variables could be considered, but the weight is the one that casts the biggest shadow.
 
For the hell of it, I just placed a make shift ramp in a fixed position on my pool table. It's a plastic ladle with ribs down the back of the handle, perfect "runner" for the ball to roll straight down. So I rolled my 2 1/4" measle ball down it and marked the endpoint where it stopped after rebounding off of 1 rail. Then I rolled my 2 1/8" snooker cueball exactly the same, same point on the rail, same position of the "ramp". The larger, and heavier, measle ball rolled pretty much 2 full ball diameters, (about 4 1/2") farther than the smaller snooker cue ball. So, the difference in ball circumference is .390", so 4.5 - .390 still leaves over 4" of additional travel which seems to me would be caused by the difference in weight between the two balls. Sadly, my digital scale only measures to 100g so the cueballs are too heavy to measure accurately.
 
I was intrigued by Lawnboy's experiment so I conducted my own. I printed a simple stimpmeter (4.5 inches, 20 degree decline, 2.35in diameter concave surface) to roll a set of cue balls and one mud object ball. Short answer is that all 5 balls rolled just amount the same distance regardless of their mass. How I held and released the balls on the ramp had a bigger impact on distance traveled than mass. I did my best to release all the balls in the same manner.

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I moved the balls laterally after each roll so each ball traveled roughly the same path down the center of my table. The 9 mud ball is far from concentric and didn't roll straight. The other balls rolled true down my 7ft table (860 cloth) bounced off the end rail, and came to rest a few inches from the rail. Perhaps we'd see bigger differences for longer rolls.
 

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How about maybe testing a full rack of balls and seeing if there is a variation between object/cue balls and stripes/solids?? If you have an accurate way to release them I would think rolling each a single time is adequate unless you get a large variation in distance. 🤔🤔
 
I was intrigued by Lawnboy's experiment so I conducted my own. I printed a simple stimpmeter (4.5 inches, 20 degree decline, 2.35in diameter concave surface) to roll a set of cue balls and one mud object ball. Short answer is that all 5 balls rolled just amount the same distance regardless of their mass. How I held and released the balls on the ramp had a bigger impact on distance traveled than mass. I did my best to release all the balls in the same manner.

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I moved the balls laterally after each roll so each ball traveled roughly the same path down the center of my table. The 9 mud ball is far from concentric and didn't roll straight. The other balls rolled true down my 7ft table (860 cloth) bounced off the end rail, and came to rest a few inches from the rail. Perhaps we'd see bigger differences for longer rolls.
 
Strange the Aramith black logo cue ball that comes with the Aramith Tournament Duramith set weighed in 13 grams heavier than the Aramith Pro Cup Measle cue ball. They both appear to be virtually new. That’s a 7.5% difference in weight.

Just curious, how many grams is the circular base you have them resting on, which obviously you need to subtract from the weights shown?
 
Strange the Aramith black logo cue ball that comes with the Aramith Tournament Duramith set weighed in 13 grams heavier than the Aramith Pro Cup Measle cue ball. They both appear to be virtually new. That’s a 7.5% difference in weight.

The heavy Aramith is a "Tournament Purple Logo Aramith Magnetic Cue Ball" I used to practice on my drop pocket home table before I compete at local Valley barbox tournaments. I once struggled to draw this cue ball (either due to its increased mass or psychological effects) so I bought one to practice.

Edit:. The plastic base is zeroed out on the scale (tared) before measurement so it doesn't impact the displayed amount.

How about maybe testing a full rack of balls and seeing if there is a variation between object/cue balls and stripes/solids?? If you have an accurate way to release them I would think rolling each a single time is adequate unless you get a large variation in distance. 🤔🤔

I ran the same test with my Dynasphere object balls and they performed the same as the cue balls. The balls on average do roll ~2 inches further in one direction (North) than the other (South), destroying my perception that my table was perfectly level.
 
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Strange the Aramith black logo cue ball that comes with the Aramith Tournament Duramith set weighed in 13 grams heavier than the Aramith Pro Cup Measle cue ball. They both appear to be virtually new. That’s a 7.5% difference in weight.

Just curious, how many grams is the circular base you have them resting on, which obviously you need to subtract from the weights shown?
Huh?? Both are 168grms. Post 27: https://forums.azbilliards.com/threads/pool-ball-weights.536976/page-2#post-7146220 I would go by Rexus31's #'s myself.
 
Well I did make a few videos to compare Artemis vs. Superspeed cushions. They aren't real good, but it might be entertaining, at least the cats might of livened up the action a bit on the last video. That video was just going to be the fail video, since those guys invaded the scene, but the second video that I did with my cheap phone had copyright issues so Youtube wouldn't publish it, so I'm kinda forced to using the failure. It must of been the music that was playing on the radio. Oh well, it's a decent comparison. Both cushions performed about the same, but Superspeed did get a bit longer distance on the average. The two white circular pieces of paper indicate kinda the average of both, nothing drastic between the two, but this is just one rail at about lag speed corner to corner. Oh yeah, the winner of the previous Soap Box Derby, Centennial (blue circle), is the only CB used in this comparison. Overall the objective was achieved here, I forgot all about work for a day and I also got my all my pro-cut rails installed. Quite the chore for an aging dude like me.
Artemis installed rail
Superspeed cushions installed
 
The balls on average do roll ~2 inches further in one direction (North) than the other (South), destroying my perception that my table was perfectly level.
There could be quite a number of other reasons for that small amount of difference aside from an unlevel table so I wouldn't assume that with too much confidence just yet. The cloth on the rail may be slightly more worn on one of the rebound spots than the other. The rail cloth may have been stretched slightly tighter on one rail than the other, or even at one spot on the rail than another spot on the same rail a couple of inches away. Proximity and angle to the the air register may have one rail a couple of degrees warmer than the other. Etc.
 
I ran the same test with my Dynasphere object balls and they performed the same as the cue balls. The balls on average do roll ~2 inches further in one direction (North) than the other (South), destroying my perception that my table was perfectly level.

The difference of rebound on one end cushion versus the other end cushion could also be attributed to the cushion rather than the table leaning downhill in one direction.
 
There could very easily be some locations on your end cushions more lively / dead than other locations, due to various possible reasons. The more varied locations you test, the more meaningful your comparisons will be.

Not really, because if you change where you do the test you are now testing how the table rolls not how the cueball rolls. This is not a test of how the table rebounds or rolls but of how the balls do, it does not matter if it's a dead cushion as long as they all use that same spot on the cushion to compare distance traveled.

All need to be compared in the exact spot, but also all need to be the same amount of clean and new which is not possible unless you test all new balls. With play the wear of the surface will change the speed enough to be measured like this.
 
Not really, because if you change where you do the test you are now testing how the table rolls not how the cueball rolls. This is not a test of how the table rebounds or rolls but of how the balls do, it does not matter if it's a dead cushion as long as they all use that same spot on the cushion to compare distance traveled.

All need to be compared in the exact spot, but also all need to be the same amount of clean and new which is not possible unless you test all new balls. With play the wear of the surface will change the speed enough to be measured like this.
Exactly, and my case they were all basically new, except for the red circle. That might explain why it didn’t perform very well compared to the blue circle. All were hand cleaned with Tiger Ball cleaner prior to testing.

Edit: The red circle has gotten all training time for the past 4 years or so. About an average of 1 hour a day. The rest have collected dust since new.
 
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