On the factory post-treatment of the sponge layer.

says Fair Play first
says Fair Play first
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SOME INSIDER NEWS ON THE FACTORY POST-TREATMENT ON SPONGE.
FIT now informed to all international members as follows:
--In response to the recent instructive letter by ITTF of February 2021, Chinese manufacturers all, with only few dissenting voices , have agreed to withhold the use of boosting materials in any forms e.g. factory bathing the cured-vulcanized sponge into mineral oil.
Hence, players all shall apply the liquid oily compounds (=boosters) on their own risk, effective since September 2021 onwards.

Get ready, please.
 
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Ha ha, Yeah, well hopefully some TT scientist nerdy type will also carry out an analysis of Euro / Japanese rubbers etc, as a check to see if there are any compounds used on their sponges😁
I could have and would have years ago but I took so much sh!t on the TT forums that I just thought you guys can live in ignorance and especially those on other forums.
.
BTW, has anybody proved boosters work? You guys, suckers, are paying hundreds of dollars/EU per gal/liter for stuff that might work for a few minutes.
Do you know what 'boosters" are the best?

Booster should work with any sponge. If I were testing I would buy a stack of cheap sponges from zeropong or colestt and put them in a pile. I would conduct two tests. One would be to see if adding more sponge increase the COR ( it doesn't ) and then soaking one pile of sponge in booster to see if it will increase the COR. It might but only for a while as long as the boost is evaporating.

BTW, the cheap sponges at zeropong are OK and worth the money. I have glued a LKT Pro XP top sheet to a HRS sponge. I use it on the RPB site of my c-pen and I don't boost it.

So who is going to do it? Not me. I am retired now. Good luck. I know the truth.


 
says toooooo much choice!!
says toooooo much choice!!
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I could have and would have years ago but I took so much sh!t on the TT forums that I just thought you guys can live in ignorance and especially those on other forums.
.
BTW, has anybody proved boosters work? You guys, suckers, are paying hundreds of dollars/EU per gal/liter for stuff that might work for a few minutes.
Do you know what 'boosters" are the best?

Booster should work with any sponge. If I were testing I would buy a stack of cheap sponges from zeropong or colestt and put them in a pile. I would conduct two tests. One would be to see if adding more sponge increase the COR ( it doesn't ) and then soaking one pile of sponge in booster to see if it will increase the COR. It might but only for a while as long as the boost is evaporating.

BTW, the cheap sponges at zeropong are OK and worth the money. I have glued a LKT Pro XP top sheet to a HRS sponge. I use it on the RPB site of my c-pen and I don't boost it.

So who is going to do it? Not me. I am retired now. Good luck. I know the truth.

I did a basic test with a couple of sheets of Friendship 729 rubbers, more to see how much they expanded, should of got a meter as well to test the hardness pre/post boosting.
both sheets expanded by about 2 - 3mm across the sheet, both axis. So was the rubber stretched? Doming would suggest this is the case, as does the more visible pimple structure.

the best result I had (or thought I had) was with DHS skyline 3 and DHS H3Neo 37 degree Provincial. Both domed up nicely, both felt softer, maybe were faster, at the time I thought there was a better speed.
Revisited this set up a couple of months ago, may be 9 ish months after boosting, the H3Neo had lost the softness, seemed to be just as fast, produced same spin!! The Skyline 3 felt exactly the same!!! Still softer, same speed same spin!!! Did the boosting actually work, maybe maybe not!!!!
Generally, now I don’t bother to boost sponges!!! Any benefits boosting may or may not have are pretty irrelevant at my level !!!
Theres so much choice these days that I think you can now find a rubber that suits your ‘parameters of performance and feel’ or be pretty dam close to it !!!

 
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I did a basic test with a couple of sheets of Friendship 729 rubbers, more to see how much they expanded, should of got a meter as well to test the hardness pre/post boosting.
both sheets expanded by about 2 - 3mm across the sheet, both axis. So was the rubber stretched? Doming would suggest this is the case, as does the more visible pimple structure.
Yasaka tested a couple of substances some years ago (2006). The patent is "Swelling agent of rubber for table tennis" https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2008049094A/en

 
says Table tennis clown
says Table tennis clown
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I am just boosting as an "experiment" and probably because i have nothing much better to do. It is kinda like an occupational therapy 😉
If boosting really IS an advantage it will not matter how long the boosting lasst for the top players because they can always fitt brand new rubbers
every match or at least every event.

As I will never have to play against Ma Long or FanZenDong , Timo Boll etc I do not really care.
Having said that, I will always vote for "even playing fields".
I am more pissed off about Illegal serves. 😆
 
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