First cue-testing robot?

Bob Jewett

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I was looking through some old copies National Billiards News and came across this cover:

Scan20200729.jpg

I sort of remember hearing about Meucci's "Myth Destroyer" before "Iron Willie". Does anyone remember when Meucci's machine first made an appearance?
 

rjb1168

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I remember it at the Expo about 15-18 years ago and Predator would not put
a cue in it. Bob had to buy a Predator to show everybody that his Black Dot
was better then Predator. Predator was right across the isle and were pissed,
just standing there staring at Bob. It was funny as hell. He would let anyone
put a cue in it, It was great.:thumbup2:
 

Bob Jewett

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Meucci and Predator had duelling machines at the 1998 BCA Expo. A few months later the Jacksonville Experiment took place mostly on Iron Willie. I believe Bob may have brought his machine to the Expo in 1997.

But what I am asking is: did Bob show his machine before 1994?
 

NathanDetroit

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Bob, Keith Paradise has an article in "Billiard Digest" titled 'Getting the Shaft". It mentions Titus inventing a robotic arm before he mentions Meucci's machine.
 

Bob Jewett

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I keep watching that wondering if it will too the ball one of these times and it doesn’t. Boy is that thing consistent.

Watch a little longer. It tops the 27th or 28th ball.

But that's the strangest pool cue I've ever seen. Doesn't seem to need chalk, though.
 

pt109

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When Allan McCarty designed their first break cue...he shipped me an early one...
BK First Edition
..we were on the phone for a while....something that amazed him...he said..
“When I started to design the break cue, I was sure it would have a stainless steel joint...
...but Iron Willie showed us that the speed of the cue ball coming off the tip was 7 to 12 %
quicker with a wood to wood joint.”....I told him that explains why I never found a snooker
cue with a metal joint that I liked...in snooker you need that extra power,
 

straightline

AzB Silver Member
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When Allan McCarty designed their first break cue...he shipped me an early one...
BK First Edition
..we were on the phone for a while....something that amazed him...he said..
“When I started to design the break cue, I was sure it would have a stainless steel joint...
...but Iron Willie showed us that the speed of the cue ball coming off the tip was 7 to 12 %
quicker with a wood to wood joint.”....I told him that explains why I never found a snooker
cue with a metal joint that I liked...in snooker you need that extra power,

Wonder why (besides errant testing) that is.
 

pt109

WO double hemlock
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Wonder why (besides errant testing) that is.

I don’t think the test results were wrong....I never found a metal joint snooker cue that
I could make a good power draw with from the length of a 6x12.
Even my Szamboti with a good snooker shaft hit weak....and it was a powerful cue at pool.
 

mikemosconi

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I don’t think the test results were wrong....I never found a metal joint snooker cue that
I could make a good power draw with from the length of a 6x12.
Even my Szamboti with a good snooker shaft hit weak....and it was a powerful cue at pool.

I am not a physics expert by any means but I would think that if you have two cues pass through a cue ball with the same purity of draw stroke as could be recreated by a robot ; that the cue with a metal joint, because of the extra weight at that end of the cue (from the middle on up) might be passing through the cue at a somewhat slower speed.

If I remember correctly, it is cue speed and not cue weight that also produced the best rack breaking results when analyzed.
 

pt109

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I am not a physics expert by any means but I would think that if you have two cues pass through a cue ball with the same purity of draw stroke as could be recreated by a robot ; that the cue with a metal joint, because of the extra weight at that end of the cue (from the middle on up) might be passing through the cue at a somewhat slower speed.

If I remember correctly, it is cue speed and not cue weight that also produced the best rack breaking results when analyzed.

Mostly cue speed, but cue weight plays a substantial role: force = mass x speed squared.

pj
chgo

I recall someone saying that speed is how fast you hit the wall.....
...torque is how far you go through it.
I’m in foreign territory here....what do you guys think?
 

The_JV

'AZB_Combat Certified'
All weight does in a cue is stabilize your stroke and slow you down. Speed of the stroke determines the rate of speed of the CB. In theory you should be able to crush a break harder with a 17oz cue than a 21oz.

Note that every other single sport that uses an implement to transmit movement on an object, golf, tennis, baseball,, etc... keep revising that implement to make it lighter. Yet somehow the power generated keeps increasing as well. Pretty common knowledge.

However for some reason in this one particular game. There's a portion of the masses that still believe a heavy cue somehow imparts "power" into their game. Kinda funny...

I honestly don't even know the weight of my cue. I've been playing with it for over 20yrs
 

Patrick Johnson

Fish of the Day
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All weight does in a cue is stabilize your stroke and slow you down. Speed of the stroke determines the rate of speed of the CB.
LiveScience.com begs to differ:

When we double the mass, we double the energy; however, when we double the velocity, energy increases by a factor of four.”

There’s even a pic to show it applies to pool:

510B855F-7C97-4503-BD74-10449DC886B5.jpeg

pj
chgo
 

Andrew Manning

Aspiring know-it-all
Silver Member
LiveScience.com begs to differ:

When we double the mass, we double the energy; however, when we double the velocity, energy increases by a factor of four.”

There’s even a pic to show it applies to pool:

View attachment 553888

pj
chgo

Thank god they included the diagram, otherwise I never would have grasped that arcane mathematical explanation.

Anyway, regarding the joint affecting the cue speed, I highly doubt that any test showing that result rigorously controlled all the other variables. For instance, it's hard to swap the joint type of a cue in between tests, especially without affecting the weight, so I'm sure they used two entirely different cues, with probably non-identical weights, and almost certainly non-identical tips (leather tips vary a lot within the same batch), and who knows how many other relevant differences.

If every other variable were the same, the joint should not affect CB speed at all. What it mostly affects is what you feel in your grip hand, and even that I think is mostly in the player's imagination.
 

Cornerman

Cue Author...Sometimes
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LiveScience.com begs to differ:

When we double the mass, we double the energy; however, when we double the velocity, energy increases by a factor of four.”

There’s even a pic to show it applies to pool:

View attachment 553888

pj
chgo

But this has been misleading for decades as well. This presumes we can magically double the velocity . In the pool stroke, we can’t. We’re limited with the how much energy the players can contribute to the whole model.

Velocity ends up being an output of the energy equation. Most people who stare at the kinetic energy equation treat velocity as an input that one can randomly increase. It isn’t and it can’t.
 

garczar

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Thank god they included the diagram, otherwise I never would have grasped that arcane mathematical explanation.

Anyway, regarding the joint affecting the cue speed, I highly doubt that any test showing that result rigorously controlled all the other variables. For instance, it's hard to swap the joint type of a cue in between tests, especially without affecting the weight, so I'm sure they used two entirely different cues, with probably non-identical weights, and almost certainly non-identical tips (leather tips vary a lot within the same batch), and who knows how many other relevant differences.

If every other variable were the same, the joint should not affect CB speed at all. What it mostly affects is what you feel in your grip hand, and even that I think is mostly in the player's imagination.
I've owned cues with every joint their is. Any difference in power is so tiny you can't tell when playing. The 'lighter is faster' deal is one of the big reasons modern golf drivers deliver so much more distance. They're also longer and made of titanium and that adds to overall speed but the weight is a lot less than what we used in 70's-80's.
 
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