Closeup of ti mesh with some mould stripped off

[bigredlemon]

Well i promised some pics of my racquet with the protective layer stripped off awhile ago... but then gave up because I couldn't get good focus. Since WWC dug up the old thread and reminded me, I decided to have another go at it. It's somewhat blurry but still very close up.

I'm gonna upload the small version of the pic. I have another pic that shows about half of the racquet, but since it's just more of the same thing, I'm not going to post it given the bandwidth problems lately. If you want it, i'll email it to you.

[Chia]

I can't see it very well but a little bit of nail polish would fix it up fine

[bigredlemon]

Here's a zoomed out view so you can orient yourself

[bigredlemon]

Things to note:

1.
bg 88 ti is supposed to be 0.69mm but we see from my "digi ruler" that it is actually 1.0mm at the edges of the racquet. This may be because it is being "squished". Eye-balling does suggest that the string width at the centre of a racquet is less than at the grommets, although the difference is very small. I'd say it's probably closer to 0.80 mm.

2.
Look at the titanium mesh. Notice how it is not even? Some mesh matrixes are thicker while others are thinner. I'm not sure how hard it is for the mesh to be exact throughout the racquet. Goes to show that not all ti-mesh racquets are created equal. Perhaps someone here has a broken ti racquet to compare?

3.
The graphite fibers seems to be bands of graphite organized in cross-hatches. This setup should give less power with dead-on smashes, but makes the racquet less likely to break. Notice that the angle is exactly 90 degrees to the shaft of the racquet. If they re-orinent the matrix by 45 degrees, they would gain 30% stiffness at a cost of 30% weaker racquet. Perhaps yonex racquets break so easily because they concentrate on power and ignore all else?

4.
That yellow "goo" on the outside is what was stripped off. You can see some melted there still. I think that's to protect the racquet from having its graphite and ti mesh ripped apart. Oh well... sigh. I wonder what material they use for this mould though, and whether it contributes to the performance of the racquet.

[bigredlemon]

Originally posted by Chia
I can't see it very well but a little bit of nail polish would fix it up fine

Whoa Chia, you reply fast!!

Btw, notice how the Ti mesh is gold/copper coloured? I always though Ti was supposed to be silver. Perhaps they added some stuff to it?

PPS. the entire image is approxiately 1.05 cm wide