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Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 3rd, 2012, 4:02 pm
by Blueprint
Six or so months ago, Mo approached me with an idea for a project that would help further people's understanding of layouts and mass properties and how they affect track flare, using Powerhouse Blueprint as a simulation tool. What initially started out as the simple task of showing a few layouts and track flare graphs has morphed into the attached paper, which is a 13-page summary of the project.

In short, this paper shows how each of the three Dual Angle Layout parameters affect track flare in a symmetrical ball, a mild asymmetrical ball, and a strong asymmetrical ball. The writeup is a little long-winded, but I hope it will serve as a valuable reference for those that take the time to read it in its entirety. If you have any questions or comments, please post them here.

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 3rd, 2012, 6:12 pm
by kellytehuna
That is some fantastic reading, with some great results! Thank you so much for doing the study and sharing the results here. The results from this study, paired with what we already know about the Dual Angle Layout System and the Gradient Line Balance Hole Technique, provides a MUCH clearer picture of why we see what we see on the lanes as we change the pin to PAP distances.

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 3rd, 2012, 6:15 pm
by Mo Pinel

This is the most articulate, most accurate, and most detailed study of this subject ever done. I glad I could contribute in a small way to this piece of research. It shows how modern technology can clarify the details of technically intricate subjects. Take a bow! You deserve it.

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 3rd, 2012, 9:17 pm
by elgavachon
Very good work Blueprint. I added this to the wiki under Bowling Ball Technology/ Ball Motion:

http://wiki.bowlingchat.net/wiki/index. ... all_Motion" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

THANKS for posting this for us and THANKS to Mo for his contributions.

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 4th, 2012, 2:28 am
by Triplicate
Now this is a great piece of work. Well done Blueprint!

This study is very telling and reveals some interesting findings that, up until now, I'd bet, were not fully understood by most every ball driller on the planet. (How could they have known without BluePrint? :lol: )

I think you've uncovered some very unique findings that will surely re-write the approach on how to drill bowling balls in the future. Very impressive indeed. Keep up the good work and thanks for sharing :!:


I now have some questions after reading this.

Page 3 top right
- how did you measure total track flare (wet plus dry)? Is Figure 5 now part of the current version of BluePrint?

The most interesting part for me was in figure 6 where the strong asymmetrical actually has the most flare with the longest pin-to-PAP distances! Therefore, there must be a specific value for the intermediate differential, (somewhere below .019 and greater than .007 in your examples used) that determines if your ball will flare more or less with longer pin lengths. What's the number that divides the strong from the weaker flares with longer pin-to-pap distances?

If your below this number it makes your asym REDUCE flare with longer pin distances and when your above this specific intermediate differential number with longer pin distances will INCREASE flare.

WHAT'S THIS MAGICAL INTERMEDIATE DIFFERENTIAL VALUE THEN IF IT DOES INDEED EXIST?

If the intermediate differential of the drilled ball were to end up on this boarder line value/situation would the ball be sensitive to small delivery errors resulting in REDUCEING flare on one shot as opposed to INCREASING flare on the next shot? Wouldn't this amplify small errors and promote inconsistencies?

If this were true then wouldn't this suggest to stay away from this boarder line intermediate differential value either on the high or low side to ensure less sensitivity to small release changes?

I hope this makes sense. What are your thoughts on this?

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 4th, 2012, 4:39 am
by JJR247
Great Work!!! I am excited to learn more about how exactly bowler specific parameters (PAP, Rev Rate) affect ball motion and get additional data on Mo's GLBH drilling techniques. Thanks for your hard work Blueprint!

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 4th, 2012, 5:40 am
by elgavachon
Triplicate wrote:Now this is a great piece of work. Well done Blueprint!

This study is very telling and reveals some interesting findings that, up until now, I'd bet, were not fully understood by most every ball driller on the planet. (How could they have known without BluePrint? :lol: )

I think you've uncovered some very unique findings that will surely re-write the approach on how to drill bowling balls in the future. Very impressive indeed. Keep up the good work and thanks for sharing :!:


I now have some questions after reading this.

Page 3 top right
- how did you measure total track flare (wet plus dry)? Is Figure 5 now part of the current version of BluePrint?

The most interesting part for me was in figure 6 where the strong asymmetrical actually has the most flare with the longest pin-to-PAP distances! Therefore, there must be a specific value for the intermediate differential, (somewhere below .019 and greater than .007 in your examples used) that determines if your ball will flare more or less with longer pin lengths. What's the number that divides the strong from the weaker flares with longer pin-to-pap distances?

If your below this number it makes your asym REDUCE flare with longer pin distances and when your above this specific intermediate differential number with longer pin distances will INCREASE flare.

WHAT'S THIS MAGICAL INTERMEDIATE DIFFERENTIAL VALUE THEN IF IT DOES INDEED EXIST?

If the intermediate differential of the drilled ball were to end up on this boarder line value/situation would the ball be sensitive to small delivery errors resulting in REDUCEING flare on one shot as opposed to INCREASING flare on the next shot? Wouldn't this amplify small errors and promote inconsistencies?

If this were true then wouldn't this suggest to stay away from this boarder line intermediate differential value either on the high or low side to ensure less sensitivity to small release changes?

I hope this makes sense. What are your thoughts on this?
I don't think you can just utilize the I.D. and expect linear results across the board. I copied a portion out of "final cautions" at the end of the article:

"With so much variation in things like mass properties, core geometries, bowler
grip sizes, and PAPs, what is true for ball #1 is not always
necessarily true for ball #2 (and similarly, what is true for
for bowler #1 is not always true for bowler #2). This is
simply the reality of today’s sport. A small difference in
core shape or a small change in PAP from one bowler
to the next can drastically change both the location
and the amount of mass removed from the ball’s core,
resulting in significant differences in the as­drilled mass
properties (and resulting on­lane performance), even if
identical layout parameters are used.
For this reason, many of the results presented here
should not be considered all­encompassing truths.
Instead, the results shown are simply those that hold true
for the bowling balls and bowler used in the study.

Therefore, try to pay attention to the high­level trends
that the results presented expose (and that have been
specifically mentioned in the text) without getting too
caught up in the details. Certain details could very likely
be ball­specific or bowler­specific and, therefore, would
not consistently be true in the general sense".

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 4th, 2012, 6:04 am
by russelldean
Fantastic work. I have been experimenting with strong assymetricals with short pin to pap. Could you graph a 1 3/4 pin to pap to go along with the 3 3/4 and 5 3/4? showing the effects of both drilling and val angles. Would be interesting to see the flare potential , as the high rg moves around beyond the val.

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 4th, 2012, 3:05 pm
by MatthiasScheinert
great work from blueprint. It is fantastic what this software can do. It is easy to understand and the graphs are great. It helped me understand the DA-system even better.
We should share that with all ball drillers, also in Germany. I hope there are no speaking boarders, but pictures help a lot.
I am very interested in future studies, such as relationship between flare and balance hole. I am sure there is more to come.
Well done.
Matthias

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 4th, 2012, 8:39 pm
by Triplicate
elgavachon wrote: I don't think you can just utilize the I.D. and expect linear results across the board. I copied a portion out of "final cautions" at the end of the article:

"With so much variation in things like mass properties, core geometries, bowler
grip sizes, and PAPs, what is true for ball #1 is not always
necessarily true for ball #2 (and similarly, what is true for
for bowler #1 is not always true for bowler #2). This is
simply the reality of today’s sport. A small difference in
core shape or a small change in PAP from one bowler
to the next can drastically change both the location
and the amount of mass removed from the ball’s core,
resulting in significant differences in the as­drilled mass
properties (and resulting on­lane performance), even if
identical layout parameters are used.
For this reason, many of the results presented here
should not be considered all­encompassing truths.
Instead, the results shown are simply those that hold true
for the bowling balls and bowler used in the study.

Therefore, try to pay attention to the high­level trends
that the results presented expose (and that have been
specifically mentioned in the text) without getting too
caught up in the details. Certain details could very likely
be ball­specific or bowler­specific and, therefore, would
not consistently be true in the general sense".
I appreciate your comments. I read and understood the disclaimer and it's precisely the statement in red that prompted this line of questioning. I'm focusing on the study only and the bowling balls and the bowler used in the study. Nothing else outside of this counts. I'm referring to only the data that has been brought forward already.

It's a difficult concept I'm trying to bring into discussion and hopefully Blueprint will know where I'm going with this. I think there is much more here than meets the eye.

With the two intermediate diffs. from .007 thru .019 there is a point somewhere in between where you fall off the other side of the bell curve (non linear) with flare reduction beyound 4.5". (Figure 6, Left column, middle graph).

Look specifically at figure 6, left row and compare the top two asym balls. You'll see where the higher intermediate diff ball (the .019 asym on top) flare keeps increasing with the increased pin lengths. The lower intermediate diff ball did not keep increasing.

I'm looking forward to Blueprints reply on this point.

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 4th, 2012, 8:43 pm
by kellytehuna
Mo has said a number of times to treat any asym with an int diff less that .008 as if it were sym. This study seems to support that stance.

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 4th, 2012, 9:36 pm
by Triplicate
kellytehuna wrote:Mo has said a number of times to treat any asym with an int diff less that .008 as if it were sym. This study seems to support that stance.
Thanks for the reply Kelly. With all due respect to Mo and yourself the study does not support that stance at all. This may have been taken out of context, I don't know. See page 11 of the study for all the data.

We may be breaking some new ground here. A symmetrical ball, a low i.d. asym. ball and a high i.d. asym ball are three very different animals. In this study, given the same drill angle and val angle, each ball flared substantially different when increasing the pin length through the entire range of samples. Again see page 11 for all the data that supports a very different view.

One other thing I noticed was the large difference in maximum flare potential for the sym and low (less than .008) i.d. asym.

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 4th, 2012, 10:15 pm
by Blueprint
Triplicate wrote: Thanks for the reply Kelly. With all due respect to Mo and yourself the study does not support that stance at all. This may have been taken out of context, I don't know. See page 11 of the study for all the data.

We may be breaking some new ground here. A symmetrical ball, a low i.d. asym. ball and a high i.d. asym ball are three very different animals. In this study, given the same drill angle and val angle, each ball flared substantially different when increasing the pin length through the entire range of samples. Again see page 11 for all the data that supports a very different view.

One other thing I noticed was the large difference in maximum flare potential for the sym and low (less than .008) i.d. asym.
Thanks to everyone for the complimentary remarks...this was a tremendous amount of work, so I'm glad people are finding this to be useful.

The general "rule of thumb" that asymmetrical balls with less than 0.008" intermediate differential behave like symmetricals isn't far at all from being in agreement with the results of this study. I prefer not to think of it as an either/or situation...in reality, it is more of a continuum. If you look at figure 12 in particular, I think you'll see what I mean. Here, you can see that the 0.007" intermediate differential ball its pretty close to behaving the same as the symmetrical ball (which flares the same for all drilling angles), but with a slight flare increase for strong drilling angle layouts. If we had another data point (a ball with 0.012" intermediate differential, for example), we'd likely see that it would more closely resemble the results for the 0.019" intermediate differential ball than the results for the symmetrical ball.

Hopefully this makes sense and doesn't add to the confusion!

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 4th, 2012, 10:17 pm
by Mo Pinel
Triplicate wrote: Thanks for the reply Kelly. With all due respect to Mo and yourself the study does not support that stance at all. This may have been taken out of context, I don't know. See page 11 of the study for all the data.

We may be breaking some new ground here. A symmetrical ball, a low i.d. asym. ball and a high i.d. asym ball are three very different animals. In this study, given the same drill angle and val angle, each ball flared substantially different when increasing the pin length through the entire range of samples. Again see page 11 for all the data that supports a very different view.

One other thing I noticed was the large difference in maximum flare potential for the sym and low (less than .008) i.d. asym.

Let's pay attention and not just spout off. When I say to treat an asym with an int. diff. < .008" like a symmetrical ball, I'm referring to the location of the PSA of the drilled ball. All the exact info in Blueprint's article are specific to each of those balls. In his conclusions, he points out that that is the case. He makes some generalities in his conclusions. I stand by my statement to treat asyms with int. diffs. < .008" as symmetrical balls. I will continue to espouse that position. The amount of total diff. has nothing to do with this issue. We can have both asyms and syms with all kinds of diffs. Blueprint's article does nothing to contradict my position. Amen, brother!

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 4th, 2012, 10:20 pm
by Mo Pinel
Triplicate,

You got your answer from two highly regarded sources, including the author. And, there was absolutely NO collaboration on our responses. That I promise you!

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 4th, 2012, 10:29 pm
by kellytehuna
Right and that was the point I was kind of making. I think Triplicate touched on the "continuum" as well, when he asked at what point does the int diff increase total flare as the pin length increases, provided the PSA is in a strong position.

I definitely had a continuum in my mind when I made my last post, but it seemed pretty clear to me that the lower int diff asym exhibited behavior that was neither "pure asym" nor pure sym, but to me, the tendencies were closer to syms than asyms. At least within the balls chosen.

Once again, these results are eye opening and I for one intend to read over the article at least another handful of times to make sure I didn't miss anything :)

Thanks again, Blueprint. :)

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 4th, 2012, 11:22 pm
by Blueprint
Triplicate wrote: Page 3 top right
- how did you measure total track flare (wet plus dry)? Is Figure 5 now part of the current version of BluePrint?
Track flare measurement functionality is unfortunately not yet in the commercial version of Blueprint. For this study, I did the track flare measurements manually using a development version of the code that has some extra functionality that isn't quite ready to be released. Automatically measuring track flare distances in an accurate way is actually not completely straightforward (primarily because of elliptical axis of rotation migration paths). We definitely want to add this capability to the commercial version of Blueprint, but it will require a bit more work to be sure that is works correctly in all cases.

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 4th, 2012, 11:44 pm
by Triplicate
Mo Pinel wrote:Triplicate,

You got your answer from two highly regarded sources, including the author. And, there was absolutely NO collaboration on our responses. That I promise you!
I thought there was some collaboration giving both replies were so close together! (just kidding, just kidding :lol: )

I appreciate the commentary by both of you and certainly respect both opinions. Nothing is ever going to change that.
Mo Pinel wrote:When I say to treat an asym with an int. diff. < .008" like a symmetrical ball, I'm referring to the location of the PSA of the drilled ball.
I knew that there had to be some sort of misinterpretation of what you had said Mo. Thanks for pointing that out.

I'm not sure we are really disagreeing on anything here and I don't think I'm misunderstanding the data output from Blueprint's study either. These types of charts and collection of data points are not at all strange to me given my background.

I still stand by the differences I've previously pointed out above given the data in the study. I was not referring to the PSA here mention above.

Also I want to trust the output from BlurePrint software and maybe it's just something in the interpolation of the data that's being missed. Being misunderstood happens with me once in a while and I'm OK with that. Maybe it's the adjectives I used and I'm still OK with that since it's just a personal expressions of what I see from the data. I remember reading here a few times... something about "Math is Truth" ;) I'm going with the math on this as always.

Again... Thanks guys and keep up the good work. I always appreciate everyone's views and replies.

Blueprint... could you please respond to the other questions in my first post regarding new features?

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 5th, 2012, 12:28 am
by Triplicate
Blueprint wrote: Track flare measurement functionality is unfortunately not yet in the commercial version of Blueprint. For this study, I did the track flare measurements manually using a development version of the code that has some extra functionality that isn't quite ready to be released. Automatically measuring track flare distances in an accurate way is actually not completely straightforward (primarily because of elliptical axis of rotation migration paths). We definitely want to add this capability to the commercial version of Blueprint, but it will require a bit more work to be sure that is works correctly in all cases.
Thanks Blueprint for the clarification. This will be a very nice addition to the already excellent software package available now.
Blueprint wrote:For this study, I did the track flare measurements manually using a development version of the code that has some extra functionality that isn't quite ready to be released.
This even further underscores the astounding efforts you've put into this valuable study on behalf of the bowling community.

Once again I have to say congratulations on a job well done! I'm sure we all appreciate your efforts. Keep up the good work here and with the future development of BluePrint Software.

Re: Bowling Ball Track Flare Study

Posted: June 5th, 2012, 12:40 am
by Mo Pinel

It is amazing how much dancing is done without any music playing!
Triplicate, thanks for taking the time to clarify and re-examine some of the issues in your discussion. You are most definitely an asset to this site.