The REAL Cost of CF Shafts

M

mrpiper

Registered
What makes a CF shaft so expensive? These shafts cost more than many nice cues with maple shafts, even maple LD shafts. Is this just supply and demand? Marketing? Material cost? Complexity of manufacture?

Asking for a frined :-)

From a material perspective, the carbon fiber blank and the maple for for making a shaft seem reasonably comparable. The maple shafts that are intricately made from multiple pieces cut and spliced together to create the shaft blank seem to be significantly more labor intensive than the process of making a CF shaft around a wood blank, but of course, I have never actually made either.

Years ago, I gave up metal shaft golf clubs for graphite shafts. The "upgrade" was quite expensive. Now these types of shafts come standard on cheap clubs from Wal Mart. They obviously aren't more expensive to make for golf clubs. Maybe someday the CF shaft will become so standard as to be a non issue in choosing a cue?
 
1. "New" technology, for pool cues anyway.
2. Pool is kind of a niche market.
3. Once you buy one, you should have
It for life. You could leave it in the. trunk of your car year 'round' and it
wont hurt it. So it's not likely they
will ever sell you another one.
 
Most any product on the market offered in multiple materials including a carbon fiber option will pretty much always be more expensive in the carbon fiber variety, maybe due to the process of manufacturing it and the material costs included, I don't know for sure.

I do know more than a few pool players who must have anything and everything new that comes out pool related, always thinking it's the thing that will take them to that next level. It rarely helps, even when they initially think it does.

I still play solid maple shafts and have opted instead on buying training materials to help step up my game over the years. I have a pretty good library of books on aiming, position play, strategy, fundamentals, banking, and so on, primarily focused on 14.1 and 1 pocket as I believe they are the best games, and still after roughly 50 years of playing I can still very easily step into a simple straight in or 10 degree cut shot and miss the hell out of it.

I think though, if anyone ever makes a carbon fiber bound book that teaches 100% concentration on ALL shots I may just be a buyer.
 
The cost of CF layup has come down about 10× in the last 20 years, driven by aircraft manufacture. Bicycles, wheels, race cars, shafts are too small a consumer of CF to dramatically alter the cost of manufacture.

CF fiber, itself, is simply rayon that is passed through a furnace which burns off all of the non carbon atoms from the plastic.
Neither rayon not the cost of the running the furnace results in CF costing "that much" more than fiber glass.

Structural CF is expensive due to the machines needed to lay up straight (non-woven) strands/widths of CF with epoxy before autoclaving.
Woven CF is not structural, is not usefully stronger than 6061 T6 aluminum, but is a lot lighter.
A lot of woven CF uses acrylic as the resin--it looks nice, easy to polish, and is easier on the shop than epoxy, but deteriorates in sun light and solvents (lacquer thinner, acetone,...)

Demand is the only reason those shafts cost what they do. If everyone stopped buying them, they would not end up costing more than maple.
 
I assume we are paying a premium for research and development, new product emergence, perceived value, new technology, intellectual property, application to performance, etc.

A CF blank may be affordable but I assume to really get it to ideal characteristics of power transfer, low deflection and desirable hit is craftwork.

It’s not like I can take a CF blank and add a grip & head and think I have a marketable or desirable golf club.
 
buckshotshoey said:
1. "New" technology, for pool cues anyway.
2. Pool is kind of a niche market.
3. Once you buy one, you should have
It for life. You could leave it in the. trunk of your car year 'round' and it
wont hurt it. So it's not likely they
will ever sell you another one.
Click to expand...
Not only is #1 about skimming the Market, meaning the latest and greatest thing comes to market at a high price.
If someone wants to manufacture these shafts it takes a very large investment in equipment and machinery. It's also a gamble if the Market will accept their design or not. If not and they want to continue with the product they need to invest more money to tweak it.

Cost of materials has nothing to do with the price charged. Not only the equipment cost, there's a heck of a lot of hours spent in development even before equipment and materials are purchased.

Skimming the Market is normal and helps the developer to re-coop their expenses quicker.
Moral of that story is: Sit back and wait. The price will come down when everyone is in it and all the technology is common knowledge. It won't be long. Couple years maybe.

Take a look at the first calculators that came to mass? market. When was that? 1968
$500?? to Only to Add Subtract and Divide
 
skip100 said:
Recouping large, upfront, and risky fixed costs through markups on variable costs is not unfair and not “skimming” the market. It’s how successful businesses function.
Click to expand...
I think “price skimming” is the textbook term for exactly what you just said.
 
But haven't CF shafts been out for quite a while? I guess my question is from my recent purchase of my J. Flowers cue w CF shaft and nice inlay for less than just the cost of the shaft alone from Viking where I was going to have one fitted to my current cue. I would have PREFERRED that option but for over $100 less I got a really nice entire cue. I understand cheap labor in China, but at some point if prices for CF ever get comparable to maple I would love to have one for my Viking.
 
MattPoland said:
I think “price skimming” is the textbook term for exactly what you just said.
Click to expand...
Skimming has a negative connotation which is undeserved in this situation.

Here, the market will decide whether the level of per-unit profit is appropriate. If other manufacturers can offer a similar product for a substantially lower price then they will do so and take market share away from Predator. Unless I’m missing something we haven’t seen much of that yet.
 
Predator spent 20 years figuring out the CF shaft. They should, and do, demand a premium. Before their shaft, CF was relegated to junk Walmart shafts. Now its the premium product on the market, and every other company spent the past 5 years scrambling to copy Predator. The exact same thing happened when Predator released their 314 shaft in 1994.

I've been in the manufacturing industry since the late 90s. Its a hell of a lot of work developing a new technology, and applying it to a product. That is even more work than developing a new product with existing technologies. When a company spends so much time, resources, and high skilled employees developing cutting edge products, they must sell it at premium prices. Otherwise, what is the point? They'd go broke! A company only sells at commodity prices when they are the bottom of the heap amonghts their competitors, and its been many years that said product has been on the market. Think clear plastic storage bins at walmart.

Don't let anyone tell you differently, the only reason to be in business is to make money. Not for the love of pool, or the love of your country, or the love of mankind. Its to make money. You don't make money selling a product at cost, or barely above cost.
 
skip100 said:
Skimming has a negative connotation which is undeserved in this situation.

Here, the market will decide whether the level of per-unit profit is appropriate. If other manufacturers can offer a similar product for a substantially lower price then they will do so and take market share away from Predator. Unless I’m missing something we haven’t seen much of that yet.
Click to expand...
Well there is also the possibility that if several, or all manufacturers all decide to charge at least a certain price then the supply and demand market or rather, competitive pricing for market share will not occur. That, is Skimming, or price gouging, whichever doesn't offend anyone.
 
CF is super expensive on car parts break rotors or as trim packages. The wings on my Lambos are $40k each or some crazy number.

Idk why CF is so expensive. It’s not new, been around since the late 80’s on Ferrari’s

Maybe it’s expensive to manufacture.

Carbon is super cheap. Why CF is expensive Idk. Probably a quick search and the answer is there

Best
Fatboy
 
I just want to know when people are going to start calling fouls on all the double hits that cf’s cause on a daily basis. Check Dr Dave’s write up on deflection. High English shots with cf shaft can and does result in double hits on occasion. That could be quite costly.
 

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3kushn said:
Not only is #1 about skimming the Market, meaning the latest and greatest thing comes to market at a high price.
If someone wants to manufacture these shafts it takes a very large investment in equipment and machinery. It's also a gamble if the Market will accept their design or not. If not and they want to continue with the product they need to invest more money to tweak it.

Cost of materials has nothing to do with the price charged. Not only the equipment cost, there's a heck of a lot of hours spent in development even before equipment and materials are purchased.

Skimming the Market is normal and helps the developer to re-coop their expenses quicker.
Moral of that story is: Sit back and wait. The price will come down when everyone is in it and all the technology is common knowledge. It won't be long. Couple years maybe.

Take a look at the first calculators that came to mass? market. When was that? 1968
$500?? to Only to Add Subtract and Divide
Click to expand...
I bought one of the first VCRs on the market. It cost me about $1800.00. Within 5 years you could buy one at Sears for around $300.00. In another couple of years they were in the $100.00 range.

The thing with the shafts though, I am told you can get blanks from China for a just few dollars.
 
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