Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

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kwettig
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by kwettig »

spmcgivern wrote: True, there isn't a commecially available oil extraction device that uses water so the Revivor Oven has that beat.
You must've missed my post on "The Wave" by Powerhouse. The links are to pictures. It's $1995.
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by Fitdocsr »

I've posed the question to a PhD in chemistry. He has 30 years in researching plastics, urethane's etc.
"Is it possible that heating a ball to 130*F could cause the plasticizers to separate from the urethane?"
His response: "Not likely unless it is severely undercured. I would expect it to hold up to about 170F."
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by LabRat »

Fitdocsr wrote:I've posed the question to a PhD in chemistry. He has 30 years in researching plastics, urethane's etc.
"Is it possible that heating a ball to 130*F could cause the plasticizers to separate from the urethane?"
His response: "Not likely unless it is severely undercured. I would expect it to hold up to about 170F."
That is true for a standard urethane, with very small amounts of plasticiser. Resin balls are deliberately manufactured with a huge excess - and its not really plasticiser, more of a liquid filler. Try asking your friend if a urethane containing 15% liquid filler will bleed - this is the whole point of making a resin ball in the first place. Reactive resin is *not* the same as normal urethane.
Chemistry is like cooking - just don't lick the spoon.
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by kwettig »

So this "liquid filler" will bleed at a given temperature? I run my revivor at 120F. I guess the real question for me is why the Powerhouse product claims it will retain the plasticizers but the revivor doesn't? I understand the liquid filler part. It was pretty neat to see it under magnification when you apply pressure to the coverstock with a knife tip or bevel knife or the like. Their claim perhaps has something to do with surface tension being submerged in water? If someone could shed some light it would be helpful.
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by LabRat »

Just to be clear - the liquid filler IS the 'resin' in reactive resin.
As I have said - I tested the stuff that bleeds out of a ball. It was not lane oil. Anything that makes a ball bleed is removing resin. Maybe the Ebo product removes less?

Modern balls soak up oil. It has to displace something in the coverstock. It should be the simplest thing in the world to extract a revivor pad and run the goop though a GCMS - why hasn't anyone done it?

quote[Their claim perhaps has something to do with surface tension being submerged in water?]/quote

That is very likely - the water will exert a little pressure on the ball, tending to' hold in' the exudate. I would expect a water bath held at the same temp as a revivor oven for the same length of time to remove the same amount of goop unless there is some other factor in play. I think the biggest difference is the temp consistency of the revivor vs home hot water in a bucket, where the temp will peak fast then cool down. There is no reason a constant temp water bath with pads shouldn't work as well as the revivor IMO.

It's interesting that everyone who has compared the methods went water bath then revivor, which then removed more resin, but not revivor - water bath. If it's simply temperature based, going from a 120 deg revivor to a 140 deg bath should make it bleed again - unless the pads physically wick out liquid instead of simply wiping it off the surface, which is a possibility.

So much science in this sport - chemistry and physics both!
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by kwettig »

LabRat wrote:Just to be clear - the liquid filler IS the 'resin' in reactive resin.
As I have said - I tested the stuff that bleeds out of a ball. It was not lane oil. Anything that makes a ball bleed is removing resin. Maybe the Ebo product removes less?

Modern balls soak up oil. It has to displace something in the coverstock.
What you are saying is that regardless of the process that ANY reactive resin ball will "bleed". Why does a new ball not "bleed" when put in a revivor? It seems that if the plasticizers are being removed when put in a revivor or any process involving temperature, then it should "bleed" right out of the box.
I have never seen that. If it doesn't "bleed" out of the box at 120F but does after it's used it would stand to reason that the variable, which is the lane conditioner, is being removed and not the plasticizers unless a chemical reaction that bonds the lane conditioner to the plasticizers happens on a molecular level. Thus being carried out with the lane conditioner. Which, if this is the case, using a water method is negligable. As anyone with a revivor knows a ball will stop "bleeding" after an indeterminate amount of time, generally depending on use and care. Again, if the plasticizers aren't "bleeding" on a new ball at a low temp(120F-140F), why would they on a ball that is used?
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by LabRat »

kwettig wrote: What you are saying is that regardless of the process that ANY reactive resin ball will "bleed". Why does a new ball not "bleed" when put in a revivor? It seems that if the plasticizers are being removed when put in a revivor or any process involving temperature, then it should "bleed" right out of the box.
I have never seen that. If it doesn't "bleed" out of the box at 120F but does after it's used it would stand to reason that the variable, which is the lane conditioner, is being removed and not the plasticizers.....

Yeah, that's what I thought too - until I tested the stuff that bleeds out. It was not oil, not was it remotely similar chemically.
kwettig wrote: ...unless a chemical reaction that bonds the lane conditioner to the plasticizers happens on a molecular level. Thus being carried out with the lane conditioner. Which, if this is the case, using a water method is negligable. As anyone with a revivor knows a ball will stop "bleeding" after an indeterminate amount of time, generally depending on use and care. Again, if the plasticizers aren't "bleeding" on a new ball at a low temp(120F-140F), why would they on a ball that is used?
They bleed because heating either closes up the pore spaces, or makes the liquid expand slightly, and the excess oozes out. There is an excess because the oil the ball soaks up takes up some of the pore space occupied by the resin. Most new balls don't bleed because the manufacturing process and finishing generates enough heat to remove any excess from the surface.
The stuff looks like oil because it is mostly branched hydrocarbon skeleton with a couple of estergroups tacked on. Oil is a mix of straight chain hydrocarbons and synthetic fat. I got a sample of lane oil from the tech where I bowled when I did the GCMS analysis - the exudate was not even soluble in the lane oil!
You can do exactly what I did - put a well-used ball in the sun, on a plate, collect some goop as it comes out and compare it to a sample of oil. Or just have an opinion based on... what? Guesswork?
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by kwettig »

I'm not trying to guess, I'm trying to understand. Thanks for your help. I'm trying to understand the process, and the claims by Powerhouse, that their method doesn't remove the plasticizers or significantly lowers their removal. My other question to you would be, what happens to the lane oil? It takes the place of the exuded plasticizers? Any theory on this? Thanks again!
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by LabRat »

kwettig wrote:I'm not trying to guess, I'm trying to understand. Thanks for your help. I'm trying to understand the process, and the claims by Powerhouse, that their method doesn't remove the plasticizers or significantly lowers their removal. My other question to you would be, what happens to the lane oil? It takes the place of the exuded plasticizers? Any theory on this? Thanks again!
If Powerhouse claim not to remove resin (plasticiser) that makes no sense to me, unless they have some proprietory solvent that selectively dissolves out lane oil (unlikely). I think the lane oil simply sticks to the urethane better than the resin, or migrates into the filler between cover and core which used to be polystyrene (not sure if it still is) and which would have similar properties in terms of intermolecular forces as the oil. So yes, it takes the place of the exuded plasticiser is my best guess - I never got around to slicing a ball up and extracting different bits to see where it went. I remember cutting an old LT48 in half asa akid, and there seemed to be oil stains in the core, so maybe it heads for the core, pressuring the cover from the inside - maybe thats why resin balls tend to crack occasionally. Urethane continues to cure for a long time (why pins sometimes stick out on older nib balls), and i alwys assumed that was the cause of the cracking in some balls. I'm confident the exudate is resin, or possibly resin + oil in modern balls, after that I am just theorising.
I have a vg I haven't cleaned in over a year - I'm going to take my own advice and do some more testing to see if what I got 10 years ago is still relevant. I have just started teaching chem labs again too so I might even be able to bludge some gc time from one of the QA guys if I can get them interested.
So much for my spare time lol.
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by Mo Pinel »

kwettig wrote:So this "liquid filler" will bleed at a given temperature? I run my revivor at 120F. I guess the real question for me is why the Powerhouse product claims it will retain the plasticizers but the revivor doesn't? I understand the liquid filler part. It was pretty neat to see it under magnification when you apply pressure to the coverstock with a knife tip or bevel knife or the like. Their claim perhaps has something to do with surface tension being submerged in water? If someone could shed some light it would be helpful.
Time for my two cents! I don't understand the difference between 130*F wet vs 130*F dry. Temperature is temperature. According to the literature on the Wave machine. Using dry heat results in the ball losing plasticizers, which, according to them, results in the ball losing its ability to absorb oil. I've used Revivors since they came out (which is years) and never saw a ball lose its ability to absorb oil, no matter how many times the ball was put in it as long as it was set at 130*F, or below. It IS critical to control the temperature accurately when heating balls. Reactive resins can be quite different. They are not all the same. Maybe what they are talking about is related to their resins.
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by kwettig »

Mo Pinel wrote: Time for my two cents! I don't understand the difference between 130*F wet vs 130*F dry. Temperature is temperature. According to the literature on the Wave machine. Using dry heat results in the ball losing plasticizers, which, according to them, results in the ball losing its ability to absorb oil. I've used Revivors since they came out (which is years) and never saw a ball lose its ability to absorb oil, no matter how many times the ball was put in it as long as it was set at 130*F, or below. It IS critical to control the temperature accurately when heating balls. Reactive resins can be quite different. They are not all the same. Maybe what they are talking about is related to their resins.
Precisely! This is what I was after. Again, I've had my destroyR in a revivor oven for hours upon hours and it now might get a 59 rating from BJI instead of a 60...

Still interested in the technical aspect. If you want me to mail you a well used revivor pad do you can analyze it that can be arranged.
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by dougsterner »

Like many pro shops I bit on the Hook Again system when it was released. Did it work? Yeah I guess so but I seem to remember Ebonite's stance at that time was that the excess plasticizer migrated to the surface of the ball due to the heat build up in the track area. The purpose of the Hook Again was to remove this excess plasticizer and thus restore the hook tothe ball.

Along comes the Revivor oven (which I just purchased last October) with a totally different technology and I have found it to be far more effective than the Hook Again.

I just received the propaganda from Ebonite concerning their new PowerHouse Wave machine. This seems to be the exact machine I was looking at building last year before I purchased the Revivor. The only thing that held me back was getting the water heated to a given temp and getting it to hold. I even had a way to skim the oil off the top of the water. Realistically a water sealed beverage cooler, some hoses, a water pump and a way to heat the water and you could build one yourself. Use hot water and some Dawn and you could be in business.

Now back on track...within the Ebonite propaganda was a claim that made me scratch my head....they are now saying that dry heat oil extraction is causing both oil and plasticizer to be removed while the hot water method removes only oil because removing plasticizer is bad.

They said that the Hook Again removed excess plasticizer because the excess was "bad". Now they are saying that removing plasticizer is bad because plasticizer is what makes the ball hook....

Which is it????
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by Fitdocsr »

Maybe EBI balls are under-cured?

Because properly cured polyol isocyanate (with the plasticizer being added to the polyol) reactions will not separate until 170* F.
I too can provide soaked Sorbent pads for analysis, we could limit the pads to certain manufacturers to provide more detail about the individual chemistry.

Gonna need some mass spectrometer time though.

Mo, don't you have just a little education in biochemistry? ;)
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by LabRat »

Google, "polymer alloy bowling ball"

"BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Bowling balls fabricated in such a manner that their coefficient of friction, with respect to lane surfaces is increased, are known. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,309,377 to Miller, Jr. et al. and 4,253,665, also to Miller, Jr. et al., for example, disclose a polymer alloy bowling ball having a continuous thin film on its surface which provides an increased coefficient of friction between the bowling ball and the bowling lane surface. The thin film is created by including a plasticizer in the resin formulation used to make the outer shell of the ball, which plasticizer then exudes through the outer shell to form the film."

"7. The method of claim 4 wherein said plasticizer is added in amounts ranging from about 5 to about 25 percent by weight of said mixture."

This was for a polyester shell ball - 5 to 25% plasticiser!

Patent link: http://www.ptodirect.com/Results/Patent ... PN/4253665" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by Fitdocsr »

Wow, you found the patent for the bleeder yellow dot! That's good stuff.
I didn't bowl then but I acquired a "9R" yellow dot in the early 90's and it was interesting.
Obviously it didn't bleed anymore after 10 years.
The chemistry is very proprietary, but I don't recall anyone using that technology in the last 10 years.
Also, I'm not sure how much Mo can reveal but I do not believe the current technology requires any fluid to ooze out of the shell.
I've been putting brand new undrilled balls in the Revivor to test for myself. As of today Ive seen no liquid of any form. The brands included so far: Brunswick, DV8, Morich, Storm, Roto Grip. I will try Track and Columbia in the coming days.

Thanks for posting that link LabRat, was interesting to read how they thought back then.
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by LabRat »

I think the bleeders predate that patent (late 79's?). There are a couple of other patents from DuPont or BASF about the resin formulations, I'll try to hunt them up again.

As far as new ball bleeders go - Try something that has been sitting on the shelf for a while, the longer the better. Urethane are thermosets - the curing process generates a fair bit of heat, so you would have to take a brand new ball past its curing temperature to get it to bleed. (Since it is going to bleed out what it can while it's hot).
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by Mo Pinel »

LabRat wrote:I think the bleeders predate that patent (late 79's?). There are a couple of other patents from DuPont or BASF about the resin formulations, I'll try to hunt them up again.

As far as new ball bleeders go - Try something that has been sitting on the shelf for a while, the longer the better. Urethane are thermosets - the curing process generates a fair bit of heat, so you would have to take a brand new ball past its curing temperature to get it to bleed. (Since it is going to bleed out what it can while it's hot).
Urethanes are 95% cured within 24 hrs.
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Re: Ball Revivor Over or Ball Revivor Bath

Post by gem »

have become interested in making a hobby level quality ball "deoiler". I made one using a microwave with the electronics replaced with hot air and recirculating fan . That seems to sweat out lots of oil. The oil must be wiped away with clean rags.
Today I built a water tank with a recirculating water pump and heater. That seems to make the ball look quite clean after about 1/2 hour.
I have kept some records of time and temperature of the ball and the water with this washer. And the water washer seems to make the ball quite clean 'looking'. But, i am not experienced enough to evaluate the amount of "deoiling benefit" the water washer provides.
My question , to you who have skills , is, how can a novice like me determine if the ball washer provides benefit?
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