Paddle Autopsy - What's Inside? Part 1: Gen-1 vs. Gen-2 Paddles

Hello friends today we'll take a peek under the hood of a few paddles to see what's on the inside I'll Focus mainly on Raw carbon fiber pedals but I also included a fiberglass paddle for comparison as you'll see these dissections tell us a lot about how different petal manufacturers are making their paddles some big differences between gen 1 and Gen 2 paddles how raw carbon fiber texture is created and importantly what exactly is going on with delamination I thought I could fit all of this into one video but there's just too much to cover so I'm going to split it up into two parts [Music] the paddles that were dissected for this video are the six zero Double Black Diamond 6-0 Black Diamond rhombus r2.16 and an old Franklin Ben John's signature paddle a quick note all of the paddles that I destroyed for this video were old and out of circulation or they were returns that were specifically sent to me for the purposes of dissection so no new pedals were harmed in the making of this video to do these paddle dissections I began by making a clean cut across the middle of a paddle with a circular saw then I used various other small tools like knives and a scalpel to peel back layers and remove other elements of the paddles [Music] let's start with the Franklin Ben John's signature paddle about three years ago 99 of the paddles on the market were using the same Simple Technology cutting through the middle of the paddle you can see the polypropylene Honeycomb Core which in this case is 16 millimeters thick the core is sandwiched between two Thin sheets of fiberglass the edges are covered with an edge guard and when you peel back the guard you can see the exposed core this Honeycomb Core extends straight down through the handle so these types of paddles are really easy to manufacture you glue the surface material onto the front and back of a large sheet of polypropylene then you cut out a bunch of paddle shapes then finally you glue The Edge guard on and a couple of buffers on the top and bottom of the handle put a butt cap on and then wrap it all with a grip looking under a microscope you can see that grit glue was applied to the fiberglass surface and you can see in the profile of the fiberglass that it's a single thin sheet without any layering the sort of furry looking stuff at the top here is the polypropylene core moving over a bit I cut back an area of the top layer of the face with a scalpel and you can see that both the paint for the design and the grit glue are applied directly on the fiberglass and that's about all I want to cover for the basic fiberglass paddle it's a really simple design with cheap materials it just goes to show you that the best players in the world can play with almost anything and it shows you how far paddle technology has progressed over the past few years alone only a handful of Pros are still using these types of paddles and most have moved on to ones that are much better designed to get way better spin better control with a larger sweet spot and more power [Music] as far as I know electrum was the first company to introduce a raw carbon fiber paddle way back in 2018 with their electrum Pro but it really didn't take off until a couple of years after that and by 2021 raw carbon fiber became All the Rage it was in this year that electrum released their Model E which became very popular and carbon entered the picture in a big way and since last year raw carbon fiber paddles have absolutely flooded the market I think gen 1 and Gen 2 were terms introduced by Chris Olsen but basically they're referring to paddles raw carbon fiber paddles before and after thermoforming gen 1 paddles are basically the same build as the simple fiberglass paddle we just looked at the Franklin Ben Johns except the face and material is different this being raw carbon fiber this is a rhombus r2.16 and you can see that the construction is largely the same as simple older paddles so a polypropylene Honeycomb Core extending straight down through the handle with the exposed edges of the core covered with Edge guard up top and a grip wrap on the handle the difference here is what's covering the paddle face which is raw carbon fiber when we lift up the foam handle buffer you can see that the raw carbon fiber extends beneath the buffer so it's clear that they're using a large sheet of polymer core with carbon fiber glued to both sides and then cutting out the shape of a paddle from these sheets so looking under a microscope I'm zoomed in on the face here moving up toward the cut I made with the circular saw you can see the typical texture on Raw carbon fiber a pattern that looks like woven cloth more about this later but when you look at the profile of the cut you can see that more is going on with the carbon fiber than what we saw on the fiberglass paddle again that's the polymer core at the top of the screen but you can see that the carbon fiber surface has three layers kind of like a layer cake this has to do with how carbon fiber sheets are laid up on the surface and we'll cover the that in more detail in the next video when I cover peel ply [Music] so let's move on to Gen 2 raw carbon fiber paddles Which is to say the thermoformed varieties the pedal we'll start with here is a 6-0 double black diamond the 14 millimeter version right away when you look at the profile of the cut you can see there's a lot more going on most noticeably there's Edge foam but also when you take off the edge guard the paddle is sealed along the edges and you can't see the polymer core so what exactly is going on basically thermoforming involves the use of a paddle mold that holds all of the materials and then the mold is hot pressed to finish the paddle the Gen 1 paddles used a Cold technology meaning they created these large sheets composed of a sandwich with the polymer core in the middle and the facing material on the top and bottom all held together with glue then a laser machine cuts out the shape of the paddle and the paddle is then finished off with Edge guards a bud cap and handle wrap thermoforming is different the first step similar in that the sandwich of the facing material and polymer is laser cut but they leave an extra buffer around the edges to allow additional components to be added in a mold a carbon seam almost like a tube is filled with foam and then is placed around the entire perimeter of the paddle in the mold from the top of the paddle down through the handle which is where the term unibody construction comes from after this the aluminum mold is sealed and then hot pressed and then the edge guards and extra handle components are added to finish the paddle This carbon seam that surrounds the paddle Edge drastically improves the ability of the paddle to withstand Force without snapping at the neck which is the Achilles appeal of gen 1 and traditional paddles this makes sense because basically the only thing holding a gen 1 pedal together is a layer cake of polymer core and surface materials glued together kick off the edge guard and the polymer core is right there with no reinforcement because the neck is the most narrow part of the handle and it's the spot where all of the bending force of the paddle is concentrated when hitting a ball it's almost always the first spot to break but when you add a carbon fiber seam over the perimeter of the paddle connecting the body and the handle through the neck it almost completely eliminates the issue of neck breakage this carbon seam also changes the performance of the paddle it makes the paddle overall stiffer with less Bend at the neck this can be a positive or A negative depending on your play style it adds more power which is an obvious positive for people who like to hit the ball hard or who need more put away power but there's also a compromise in terms of the soft game and finesse [Music] lately I've been recording maximum serve speed on my paddles with a radar gun and the thermoform varieties are clearly outperforming other paddles in terms of raw power My Method here is that I serve a ball as hard as I can 10 times for each paddle and then take the average speed but the serves have to be legal in terms of how the ball is struck so underhanded in a way that the highest point of the paddlehead is below the wrist joint where it bends it's definitely possible to create more power with a sidearm swing or obviously with an overhead slam but I thought a legal serve would be a good way to establish a baseline to compare paddles there's also video footage of all serves that were speed tested so that I can verify what serves are legal six miles per hour as a side note this has been a really good way for me to learn how to get more power on servers while staying within the legal limit so I reviewed the video on all of these serves and throw out any stairs where any part of the paddle head is above my wrist and to be clear not all of these serves are landing in I was going to make that a requirement but I noticed that for any serve to go in bounds when it's hit over 50 miles an hour it has to have a lot of dip which means the paddle needs to have a really good spend potential so I would effectively have to use different amounts of force for different paddles to get the ball in which would skew the numbers for Speed on the other hand I'm also not counting wild serves so if it passes several feet over the net and would have no chance of going in no matter how much Top's been when we compare the average serve speed for all the pedals I tested you can see that the thermoformed models topped the chart for legal paddles I also tested several EVA foam paddles such as the diadem Vice and rhombus EV models EVA foam paddles are not usap approved because they have too much power and don't pass deflection tests you can see a clear gap between the legal and non-legal paddles the top legal paddles all clock in around 55 miles per hour so there are nine paddles that clocked in between 54 and 55 miles per hour and of those nine seven are thermoformed varieties the other two which at least are not advertised as thermoformed are the proteinx black Ace and the diadem icon and I had a chance to speak with the owner of diadem and he confirmed that the icon is in fact made with a mold so a hot mold similar to thermoformed and I imagine that the Protonix black Ace does the same so in my mind all mine of these paddles between 54 and 55 miles per hour are in in fact thermoformed outperforming in terms of speed all of the other paddles on the list besides the EVA foam paddles Which are not usap approved so clearly something about the thermoforming process adds significant power to a paddle and just to be clear none of the thermoformed paddles in this chart show any signs of delamination this bonding or core crushing my guess is that it probably relates to the carbon fiber seam placed around the perimeter to seal the edges which makes the paddle stiffer and probably also relates to the heat and pressure applied to the paddle during thermal forming the possible downside to that heat and pressure applied to a paddle is that it may cause the core to break down more quickly resulting in a trampoline effect that gives the paddle way too much power that seems to have happened when the first versions of the thermoformed paddles hit the scene earlier this year resulting in all of the controversy at pro events back in March and April and it turns out that we can learn some very interesting things about thermoformed paddles when they are dissected and analyzed under a microscope which is exactly the topic of part two of this series

Channel: Johnkew Pickleball

Views: 11,650

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Id: dA4soTGgYE0

Length: 11min 33sec (693 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2023