- #1
PoolMinnow
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- TL;DR Summary
- Looking for help to design/part out a ball rack into which I can break and get an instant readout as to the proper metric (force, impetus, KE . . . ).
The Background.
In pool - 8 ball specifically, the most important shot by a good margin is the break. If your goal is to consistently break and run a table, which pros can do about 60-85% of the time on a standard 7' bar table, it is critical to have a dependable, reproducible, strong break that results in at least one ball pocketed and a decent spread of the remaining balls, while maintaining cue ball control. In 8 ball.
The Problem.
Practicing your break generally involves setting up a rack of balls every time you break, which takes a minute or a bit less. That means that you are, essentially, restricted to 60 breaks an hour. The good part is, you get real time, real life results, because you can see exactly how your break was - did you pocket a ball? How is the spread? Did you keep the cue ball centered? And so on. But 60 an hour is really, very slow, when you consider that I can practice a rail-shot or a jump shot or a long english shot at the rate of about 400 an hour. Side note - for me, repetition is everything.
Existing solutions.
There are at least two, and they are both lacking.
The first is a phone app that will tell you your break speed. Okay, but velocity of the cue ball, while being critical component of break effectiveness, provides only one part of the picture. As I'm sure you have already sussed out, an off center hit on the front ball of the rack at high velocity will result in much of the KE of the cue ball being dissipated as it hits a rail or two, with less energy transferred to the rack. Obviously, this solution requires a re-rack with each break, so, while it does help with instant feedback on your stroke, it fails to address the fundamental problem.
The only other solution about which I know is a device that is, essentially, a weighted 1 ball that is held on the breaking spot with tensioned cords. When you break, the 1 ball is knocked backwards and then springs back to its original spot, and your cue ball travels as it normally would. This costs 500 bucks. Ouch.
Positives - instant feedback on cue ball control. Combined with speed app (or "radar" that can be added on to this device), you get two instant data points with each stroke, and there is no wait time to shoot again.
Negatives - speed, again, isn't definitive without vector.
Proposed solution:
Essentially, the same concept as the 2nd solution, above, but using some sort of force meter instead of a velocity meter.
My concept is this - form something roughly in the shape of a rack of balls (can be exactly the same size as a normal rack or as few as a three ball triangle). The front of this unit, facing the breaker, will be a billiard ball, so that energy transfer matches real world conditions. Let's call this the Break Mass. At the back of the Break Mass add something uncompressible that connects the Break Mass to the back cushion, so that when the front ball of the Break Mass is hit, there is some spring allowed through the cusion and so the Break Mass stays about where it should be. The Break Mass can be tethered to the pool rail above the cushion if it is found that the Break Mass moves around too much between breaks. At this point, it's just a poor man's version of the 2nd solution, above. To improve the concept, and this is where I really need help, I need a sensor of some kind that can be placed on top of the Break Mass that will instantaneously read a metric and display it. It must be visible from the breaking position. In a perfect world, it will hold the reading for 5 seconds or less and then reset. I would prefer a sensor that can be position on top of the Break Mass, rather than in line with it, between it and the cushion, but I recognize that might not be possible. The sensor can be stand alone, can send wireless info to a screen located elsewhere (or a phone), or can be wired to a screen that sits on the pool table back rail.
Please keep in mind the following:
I'm only concerned with breaking with the cue ball from virtually head on or perhaps an inch or two off the center breaking spot, which would be an incoming angle of 5 or 10 degrees. It's not important for the sensor (or sensors) to measure forces or energy that are not in a vector that is not along the dot to dot line (centerline) of the table, because I'm more interested in relative values than absolute values.
That is, I don't really care what the unit is, as long as the measured difference between strikes is consistent.
In the real world, you'll sometimes see the cue ball "jump" after it slams the front ball of the rack. While that is quite showy, and combined with a big break and several balls made looks impressive, it's actually not ideal, because it means that your cue ball was not in a parallel plane to the table surface when it struck. Energy is therefore lost as the lead rack ball transfers energy into the slate. That will show up in this setup as a reduced number, which is good enough feedback, and so non parallel cue ball strikes are not important to measure or consider.
That was all a bit rambling.
To the point then, what should i measure and how?
Ultimately, the KE (1/2mv^2 IIRC) is all that matters, right? The kinetic energy imparted to the Break Mass is a direct translation of what I can expect the balls to do in the real world, assuming that I'm keeping the cue ball in a narrow incoming line. Does that sound right?
Force=MA, and force over a distance changes KE, but that's where I tap out on this. If a device measures force applied to the Break Mass, my intuition tells me that should work to meet my goal, but I'm not sure why both of these (KE and F) should work.
The mass is constant here, so KE is V^2/2, which is an exponential function of velocity, and for Force, it would be just acceleration, which is change in velocity. Theoretically, if I improve my velocity, the first measure would show a non-linear, larger increase than the second. If I double the incoming speed of the ball, KE goes up by a factor of change in V squared, while F goes up by a factor of change in V. It won't matter to me, but I know the first is the correct real world effect.
So, help please, if possible! My budget is about a grand (exclusive of the Break Mass).
Any help greatly appreciated. The rest of my game is solid. My break . . . My Goodness.
In pool - 8 ball specifically, the most important shot by a good margin is the break. If your goal is to consistently break and run a table, which pros can do about 60-85% of the time on a standard 7' bar table, it is critical to have a dependable, reproducible, strong break that results in at least one ball pocketed and a decent spread of the remaining balls, while maintaining cue ball control. In 8 ball.
The Problem.
Practicing your break generally involves setting up a rack of balls every time you break, which takes a minute or a bit less. That means that you are, essentially, restricted to 60 breaks an hour. The good part is, you get real time, real life results, because you can see exactly how your break was - did you pocket a ball? How is the spread? Did you keep the cue ball centered? And so on. But 60 an hour is really, very slow, when you consider that I can practice a rail-shot or a jump shot or a long english shot at the rate of about 400 an hour. Side note - for me, repetition is everything.
Existing solutions.
There are at least two, and they are both lacking.
The first is a phone app that will tell you your break speed. Okay, but velocity of the cue ball, while being critical component of break effectiveness, provides only one part of the picture. As I'm sure you have already sussed out, an off center hit on the front ball of the rack at high velocity will result in much of the KE of the cue ball being dissipated as it hits a rail or two, with less energy transferred to the rack. Obviously, this solution requires a re-rack with each break, so, while it does help with instant feedback on your stroke, it fails to address the fundamental problem.
The only other solution about which I know is a device that is, essentially, a weighted 1 ball that is held on the breaking spot with tensioned cords. When you break, the 1 ball is knocked backwards and then springs back to its original spot, and your cue ball travels as it normally would. This costs 500 bucks. Ouch.
Positives - instant feedback on cue ball control. Combined with speed app (or "radar" that can be added on to this device), you get two instant data points with each stroke, and there is no wait time to shoot again.
Negatives - speed, again, isn't definitive without vector.
Proposed solution:
Essentially, the same concept as the 2nd solution, above, but using some sort of force meter instead of a velocity meter.
My concept is this - form something roughly in the shape of a rack of balls (can be exactly the same size as a normal rack or as few as a three ball triangle). The front of this unit, facing the breaker, will be a billiard ball, so that energy transfer matches real world conditions. Let's call this the Break Mass. At the back of the Break Mass add something uncompressible that connects the Break Mass to the back cushion, so that when the front ball of the Break Mass is hit, there is some spring allowed through the cusion and so the Break Mass stays about where it should be. The Break Mass can be tethered to the pool rail above the cushion if it is found that the Break Mass moves around too much between breaks. At this point, it's just a poor man's version of the 2nd solution, above. To improve the concept, and this is where I really need help, I need a sensor of some kind that can be placed on top of the Break Mass that will instantaneously read a metric and display it. It must be visible from the breaking position. In a perfect world, it will hold the reading for 5 seconds or less and then reset. I would prefer a sensor that can be position on top of the Break Mass, rather than in line with it, between it and the cushion, but I recognize that might not be possible. The sensor can be stand alone, can send wireless info to a screen located elsewhere (or a phone), or can be wired to a screen that sits on the pool table back rail.
Please keep in mind the following:
I'm only concerned with breaking with the cue ball from virtually head on or perhaps an inch or two off the center breaking spot, which would be an incoming angle of 5 or 10 degrees. It's not important for the sensor (or sensors) to measure forces or energy that are not in a vector that is not along the dot to dot line (centerline) of the table, because I'm more interested in relative values than absolute values.
That is, I don't really care what the unit is, as long as the measured difference between strikes is consistent.
In the real world, you'll sometimes see the cue ball "jump" after it slams the front ball of the rack. While that is quite showy, and combined with a big break and several balls made looks impressive, it's actually not ideal, because it means that your cue ball was not in a parallel plane to the table surface when it struck. Energy is therefore lost as the lead rack ball transfers energy into the slate. That will show up in this setup as a reduced number, which is good enough feedback, and so non parallel cue ball strikes are not important to measure or consider.
That was all a bit rambling.
To the point then, what should i measure and how?
Ultimately, the KE (1/2mv^2 IIRC) is all that matters, right? The kinetic energy imparted to the Break Mass is a direct translation of what I can expect the balls to do in the real world, assuming that I'm keeping the cue ball in a narrow incoming line. Does that sound right?
Force=MA, and force over a distance changes KE, but that's where I tap out on this. If a device measures force applied to the Break Mass, my intuition tells me that should work to meet my goal, but I'm not sure why both of these (KE and F) should work.
The mass is constant here, so KE is V^2/2, which is an exponential function of velocity, and for Force, it would be just acceleration, which is change in velocity. Theoretically, if I improve my velocity, the first measure would show a non-linear, larger increase than the second. If I double the incoming speed of the ball, KE goes up by a factor of change in V squared, while F goes up by a factor of change in V. It won't matter to me, but I know the first is the correct real world effect.
So, help please, if possible! My budget is about a grand (exclusive of the Break Mass).
Any help greatly appreciated. The rest of my game is solid. My break . . . My Goodness.
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