Ask the Cuemaker...cue xrays....

DrJ said:
I hope to have a chance next week to put a couple of cues through an xray machine that is made for inspection purposes...first how should I do it? My plan was to put, say, 4 butts in the machine and then take a shot of each 90 degree rotation, for 4 pics total.

Then what am I likely to see...obviously the metal and wood will show up differently...and possibly any voids, cracks or wood/wood interfaces might show up well too...is this right, and what else am I likely to see and what should I plan on looking for?

Any advice on this topic is appreciated...Thanks

Although I have never X-rayed a cue, all of the ones I have seen X-rayed show everything. Different woods show different shades of grey, all the voids (including any cracks) show and all the metal parts and phenolics stand out.

Dick
 
I don't know if he is still on here but I remember Edwin Rayes is an x ray tech who used to do his cues. Shoot him a pm. Chris.
 
You might try contacting Kerry Zeiler (Zylr Cue) on the board here. Believe he was/is a radiologic x-ray technician and has some past experience shooting cues.
 
One of the first things that you have to make sure of when doing cue x-rays is aligning the wood's grainlines perpendicular to the plane of the x-ray film as MOST cracks run with the grain and not across it. Some fractures do cut across at an angle (area of interest is the bottom of the joint pin around 2-2.5" from the joint face). But normally the effect of such fracture is immediate.

Stress fractures, appearing as black lines, occur when abnormally excessive external side forces are applied to the structure.

Blow out fractures are from extensive internal forces. Such as in jointings where the wood surrounding a cavity is subjected to hydraulic or combination of Hydraulic/pneumatic/mechanical pressure. Areas of interest for such occurance is the A-joint and the joint pin cavities.

Inadequate knowledge in manufacturing also appears and so does "special fixes" (ooops) done during the cue's manufacture.

Under the former you'll usually find oversized cavities or undersized tenons and insufficient adhesive coating in cavities. In the later you can find replugged threaded cavities as an example. Shimming of the A-joint faces also fall under the ooops department.

You can also see natural anomalies in the woods where the softer areas appear darker than the surrounding structure. Or unatural where, believe me this surprised me too, a staple was left inside one of the inlayed point's cavity. I don't know what the staple was for. LOL

I hope that this somewhat helps you out.
 
I'm looking forward to seeing the xrays or scans.

Martin


DrJ said:
Thank you for the really excellent info...one of the cues involved may have a crack/defect...but mainly I want to look at the construction to help identify who may have made them...the x-ray machine involved is used for inspecting electronic assemblies, so I'm hoping it'll serve for this purpose also...hopefully, if the machine is available next week, and the pics work out, I'll have something to post then....
 
bandido

Im an xray tech and was thinking about shooting my cues. What sort of technique should I use to get best detail
 
puckdaddy said:
Im an xray tech and was thinking about shooting my cues. What sort of technique should I use to get best detail
Depends on the FS speed. Remember too that the cue has less than 10% the liquid content of the human body. So for a 400 FS combo at 40FFD and processing factors available, I use finger technique 2mAs@48kVp.

I also try to shoot 1 cue at a time and collimate/mask off around it to minimize distortion and scatter(albeit very minimal).
 
attachment.php

nice x-ray thnx
Taking them at dead-on overhead might be better.
Shows cavities ( dark ) and metal ( silver ) show better I think.
 
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Is 3c from a Balabushka cue? I'm wondering if that is a lag-bolt pictured at the A-joint?

Martin


DrJ said:
Well I have some x-ray pics...need to sort them all out and scan them in...but here are some teaser pics....
 
GoLLLLy, look at all that metal stuff down there by the butt plug part.

Musta done that to use up some spare parts or sumpin.

It's soooooooooo goofy that I'd like to own it..........;) ( SO WOULD A BOAT LOAD OF OTHERS :) )
 
Interesting. It looks like you used an inspection fluoroscope for these as the denser parts came out black.

The coarse thread stud bolt used looks like a 5/16" diameter (estimating that A-joints are mostly in the range of 26.4mm-27.2mm)

Here's a side by side for viewers to easily understand what they're looking at. There is a possibilty of existance of an air-filled void
due to the observed difference in density from a comparable area.
 

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