BallReviews
General Category => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: Armourboy on July 14, 2013, 10:40:22 PM
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Ok so I know Columbia 300 came out with the EPX-T1 prior to being sold to Ebonite. I also know that it had a lot of issues with the initial batch and was not received well overall.
The reason I ask is, it just seems odd that the technology just completely died from one ball release. Is it a case that after more testing and research that they couldn't solve the problems with the new resin, or is it that everyone is just afraid that the general bowler wouldn't give it a try after what happened with the EPX-T1?
I think I remember reading that Storm was working on the same technology at the time, but I don't ever recall seeing them release one.
I guess a secondary question would be, are companies just simply afraid to go out on that limb today like they might have 10-15 years ago?
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Due to the large failure nobody wanted to give it another shot. If I recall there was a lot of issues with it. Due to the amount of ball companies that are out now and the fear of releasing a big flop ball companies are not willing to take such a huge chance. Those are just my thoughts.
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Besides the EPX-T1, there was an overseas version the EPX-A1.
AMF had an epoxy ball out too - I think it was called the Velocity.
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Were they just not very successful across the board? Just seems odd that everyone just up and dropped them.
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At the time the balls were alot more expensive to produce, so they wholesaled for about $25 more than current high end at the time. Couple that with a 50% defect rate and that pretty much shut down the epoxy coverstock.
There was no AMF ball. It was only released under C300. There was discussion if it should be released as an AMF, C300 or Track ball first. Track was slightly higher priced at the time and doing it under AMF would have protected the other brand's reputations, but it was ultimately decided to use the C300 label.
There were test balls out using other cores. I'm not sure what core the AMF guys tested. I was a Track salesman at the time. I had one with a Rule core. It made the production balls with the Rock On core look weak.
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Yeah I guess a higher price + that many bad balls would stop it in its tracks pretty quick. Just semi surprised they didn't keep working on it. Although I guess after 8 years and still not getting it right it may be time to cut your losses.
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The Ebonite purchase of C300 was about 9 or 10 months after. I left just as the EPX was released so I'm not positive about the timeline, but I know it was less than a year.
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Makes me wonder how much of the future they had riding on it then. Appreciate the info.
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I had an EPX, still have it actually. It still hooks when nothing else will make a move, if there is a flood of oil, the EPX can handle it for sure...i should prob take a look at it and see if it cracked like everyone else. It's been sitting on the rack for 3+ years
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It was a swing for the fences because if it had been successful it would have been the next coverstock craze. I wasn't in a position to know if it was do or die, or if this would have turned it around to keep a sale to EBI from happening.
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Around that time track was also planning on releasing an epoxy ball with the "clamshell" core, the one in the inertia, forget why I was told that never happened. Also amf did come out with the overseas epoxy ball "Project-X" . Amf also made a few velocity epoxy balls, there was a green one and a blue one but they never received approval from the usbc.
Brad
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The Project-X was even PBA approved due to it being cleared for the Japan Cup (when AMF was still product registered)
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The clamshell was the replacement for all the weight blocks that used the "plate" design. There were financial reasons for wanting to get away from that design. We'll leave it at that.
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No inside info, and certainly not intimately familiar with the facts, but I have always believed that the failure of the Epoxy ball lead directly to the demise of Columbia. Lots of sunk R and D, high cost to manufacture, plus all sorts of quality control problems batch to batch doomed the ball. I had one. Never thought it got a good reaction, and it cracked out after relatively few games.
Here is the thing people do not understand about ball reaction. Finding something with pure increased friction is not enough. Urethane was successful because it had more friction than polyester. However resin enhanced urethane was a step forward because it enhanced friction off the dry without significantly increasing friction in oil. Besides the quality control isssues, Epoxy failed because it increased the friction in the oil as much as off the dry. If you lose your early skid as a price for more hook it accomplishes nothing except on the most flooded conditions.
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One bad ball isn't going to make or break a company. If it would have been successful the idea was it could have turned things around because it was a completely new coverstock.
Only about 1/2 of them cracked. There were some pretty great bowling minds that worked out of San Antonio. I'm pretty sure they understood ball reaction.
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One of the key players behind the development of the Epoxy cover was Carmine Salvino. He took his chemistry set and moved over to Brunswick. He developed the CFT additive that Big B is using in their equipment now. Who's to say that epoxy balls aren't on the market right now? No one will call it that since that word is taboo much like the term Particle. Just food for thought...
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It could easily be used in some shape or form that has a different name. Just like particle covers now referred to in many cases as "addative". There is always something new to promote.
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CFT is just another name for the resin added to the urethane cover. Friction can be obtained by the tecture of the surface, or the chemical composition. Pure urethane gets it friction from the coarseness of the surface. Resin enhanced urethane gets added friction on the dry from the chemical resin additive.
Trust me, nobody is making Epoxy balls under any name. Cost prohibitive, considering the incrementally small, if any, enhanced performance available from an epoxy compound. Also, remember epoxy simply describes hardening process the material, not what it is. Epoxies have a hardening agent that chemically reacts with the base compound to enhance the hardening.
One of the first urethane lane finishes clear back in the 70's was an epoxy (astrolane from Brunswick ). All that meant was that a hardener was added that chemically hardened the underlying urethane. It lost favor back then because it was extremely difficult to work with due to the short drying time.
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A few bowlers in my area had an EPX-T1 when they were first released. It wasn't a big hooking ball, just very rolly and early which was great when the lanes had oil and nothing else hooked. The big problem with the new shell was that it had a tendency to crack and the ball was rather expensive compared to other balls in it's class. I had a used one and I liked it but the epoxy shell had an odd smell and the cover would bleed oil if you didn't towel it off or clean it right away. Other than that it was a pretty solid oiler with good hit.
Anyway I sent an email to Columbia 300 back then asking if there would be any future balls utilizing the epoxy cover. I got a reply from Danny Speranza saying they were researching possibilities or something to that effect. Can't quite remember since it was so long ago but it was sad to see C300 being sold soon after and not having the opportunity to see what they could do with the epoxy cover in future balls. Oh well.
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Really appreciate all the info. When I stopped bowling in the early 2000's Hammer was still made by Faball, Columbia was its own company, and Storm was something I bought because no one else was throwing it. There was a stretch there apparently where the industry just went haywire, can't decide if I'm glad I missed it or not.
Anyways it was a topic I brought up because I wasn't bowling then. You always hear about infamous balls, speculation on what happened to this company or that and I figured I would ask.
Just seems to me that there must of been some inherent quality issues with the coverstock for it to just die industry wide like that. Makes you wonder just how many things they try that are so bad they never get much past the initial testing phase.
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There have been other shells tried by companies over the years. Ebonite had something called acrylium in the mid 90's. A few guys had some instant success with it, but it also never caught on.
The true bottom line with all shell advancements is simply that there is not really much room for improvement. On house shots we already have guys averaging 250 which means they are only losing 2 hits per game. On tournament patterns there is really no shell that allows you to get the ball in the pocket more to overcome inconsistent release problems. When you do hit the pocket on tournament patterns the carry is also very good.
When the first soft polyester balls came out in the early 70's there was a quantum improvement in carry compared to the harder shell balls. When urethane came out its different friction characteristic again improved carry significantly for guys who could generate revs. Resin enhanced urethane increased carry power for lower rev guys significantly. Nothing since resin in the early 90's has really been shown to enhance carry the way those innovations cited did when they were introduced.
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Makes me wonder then if there will be a next step like there has been in the past. I guess unless they make a significant change in the rules or something they've probably done about all the giant leaps they can.
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I think the next big thing is being worked on. However we will not really know about it as much as say Epoxy or particle equipment. It's going to be something "tweaked" and not really released on what that tweak is. That is my guess.
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Here is the reason I don't think we will see a revolutionary break through in balls like the soft polyester, urethane, and resin enhanced urethane were. All of those breakthroughs came because each new ball surface was able to increase friction at the optimal point on a lane.
If you look at balls today, the first thing you notice is that some of the best and most popular balls are mid priced, so called medium strength balls. I have talked to ball reps about why bowlers liked the Frantics and Hy Roads better than the top of the line Storm stuff, or the Versa Max better than some of the more aggressive Nexus balls. They agree that in the arms race of power, cores and shells have become so aggressive that they don't match up well on a lot of conditions.
Look how many guys are winning with Vibes, Freezes and IQ Tours ( strong shell but tame core ).
Always dangerous to say that there are no break through technical innovations out there in any endeavor. I just know that if there is one in bowling balls it is not as simple as what we saw in the past which was always to make the balls more aggressive in some manner.
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I gotta say the Best oiler I have ever had in my hand was the EPX. It was different somehow in a way i can't put a finger on
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Columbia did not demise. The heirs tp the throne did not wish to run the company. When the columbia patriarch was ready to retire his children did not wish to take over, thats why there was the sale to ebonite. Research will always be done to advance the cover. Epoxy absorbed too much oil required too much work. Particle balls were a better answer and more versatile. particle balls flourish in flooded conditions but have advanced to cover so much more. Epoxy was not a columbia experiment alone. Other companies did come out with epoxy. But one bad ball did not sink the columbia empire, it was simply no longer wanted in the family.
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Epoxy was first started by AMF. AMF came up with the formula and was doing the research. I didn't witness this story first hand but as told to me....They had a few samples of different strength balls and one of their pro staff guys (Brian Voss) would test them at one of the expos. The balls were nuts and there was no amount of oil that could control them. If I remember correctly even the balls had pancake cores to show you how strong the cover was. They had 3 strength of coverstocks and the 1st two were silly strong.
Voss lined up with a Nighthawk and threw a couple of X's in a row. They handed him a test epoxy ball and it went into the left hand gutter. How much of this is truth, or story I'm not sure of.
Some time after that AMF sold the project to Columbia or lent it to them to develop. At the time I can't remember but I think AMF and Columbia were business partners.
The epoxy ball didn't sell because it was too smooth and didn't offer the type of reaction that league bowlers were looking for. League bowlers didn't want the "urethane" reaction on steroids. The ball was ugly looking as well and had no shelf appeal. Thrown in the problem with cracking and you had a project that went south fast.
Same thing went for particle balls. Anyone remember the Rip-Tide?
Particle balls got better as coverstock tweaks came out. Than the bowling community seemed to get tired of the ball reaction and the word "particle" became a no no. Particle get re-named as enhanced reactive resin, or low load particle resin and whatever new name came out as the cover stocks had lower % of particle loads.
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I also heard the same story about the first test balls, although I thought it was Chris Barnes not Voss. I could be wrong on that. I think there were some EPX balls that were good, but the one I had was a dog even before it cracked, and trust me on this, I was not a league bowler looking for a big back end. The quality control problems were not limited to cracking, but to overall performance. The attempts to tame the ball down enough to be useable sometimes resulted in batches that were too tame.
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AMFs was Project X
I had a EPX and it was great, reliable and consistent in oil more so than anything else.
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Not that it is part of the topic, but I had heard a story that at some point one of the ball companies had actually developed a coverstock that would not hook on anything including a fully stripped lane. Dead straight no matter how many revs.
They didn't think there would be enough of a market for it (basically 1 per bowler) so they never brought it out of R & D.
No idea if it was true or not. maybe some people here will know.
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Still have my EPX-T1 and it is in great shape. Ball has seen very little action. I learned very quickly that this ball (at least for me) usually doesn't make through 1 game before I am switching to another ball.
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I think a ball that would not hook, assuming the application of side roll, is not possible due to the fact that it would require a 0 coefficient of friction between lane and ball. With oil, the coefficient of friction can approach 0 between a highly polished polyester ball and the lane, but no ball surface, even Teflon, would do this on a dry lane.
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Would be interesting to see a hard, polished NYLON bowling ball.
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All depends on the oil. No oil, the ball hooks no matter what the surface material