Topic: First home made bat - designed by artificial intelligence (Read 27678 times)

InternalTraining · « **Reply #45 on:** August 24, 2021, 02:43:18 PM »

Quote from: marsbug on August 24, 2021, 02:04:59 PM

I'm trying to see how much of a difference these make, as it might look huge on a graph, but the difference might only be a few millimetres. Which I would definitely not notice as I swung and missed again!

Did the original author or you, through trial-and-error, arrive at an Objective Function "constant", for different/all shapes, even within a certain margin of variability?

Or, did your experiments reveal that there is no constant? If so, if we were to expand the objective function, what fundamental need to be made to the bat shape?

InternalTraining · « **Reply #46 on:** August 24, 2021, 02:47:11 PM »

Why not have more than one objective functions? Isn't it what Rashid Khan's bat profile trying to achieve?

SOULMAN1012 · « **Reply #47 on:** August 24, 2021, 06:00:34 PM »

I can�t say I understood a word of this thread lol. So does this shape improve your batting given the amount of theory that�s gone into the shapes

marsbug · « **Reply #48 on:** August 25, 2021, 08:39:50 PM »

Quote from: InternalTraining on August 24, 2021, 02:43:18 PM

Did the original author or you, through trial-and-error, arrive at an Objective Function "constant", for different/all shapes, even within a certain margin of variability?

Or, did your experiments reveal that there is no constant? If so, if we were to expand the objective function, what fundamental need to be made to the bat shape?

I don't think so, if I understand correctly. Their study was trying to find a mimimum for that objective function, but of course, as you said, you could come up with whatever objective function you thought was the best estimate of something about the bat. As long as it involved a value that could be worked out in the simulation. If I ever get round to simulating the final 30 or so of the B3 shapes, then hopefully I can at least say something about the shapes used at present.

marsbug · « **Reply #49 on:** August 25, 2021, 08:43:58 PM »

Quote from: SOULMAN1012 on August 24, 2021, 06:00:34 PM

I can�t say I understood a word of this thread lol. So does this shape improve your batting given the amount of theory that�s gone into the shapes

Well it's just something to take my mind off not being able to make bats anywhere nearly as nice as yours! They look great.

I've only just started playing again after 20 years out, so I think it'll take more than a strange bat shape to improve my batting!

marsbug · « **Reply #50 on:** August 25, 2021, 08:55:28 PM »

What is probably the ugliest bat I willll ever make�

The second of my part-mades from H4L was a really nice grade 2. I kind of wished I hadd saved it for another shape, but I will know for next time. No before photos again I�m afraid.

I used a different method for coming up with the shape of this bat. The last lockdown and home-schooling got me trying to think of activities that our two little ones would like, but that would somehow still involve making a cricket bat. Given that it�s probably bad form to let a 5 year old loose with an orbital sander, I thought I�d borrow a trick from car making � industrial modelling clay.

I got a tub of this stuff, softened a load of it in the microwave, then gave half to the kids, and the other half I started plastering all over a sacrificial cheap Kookaburra (more on that in a refurb thread at some point). I covered the bat in cling film to stop the clay sticking, but it is good stuff and would have come off fine. It took a bit of time (but then so did lockdown), to cover the whole bat and get round to shaping it.

After all the computer simulation and vibration stuff, I wanted to try something weird with the toe, to try to get a long middle.

The end result with the clay was not nice looking! So I just used it as a guide in the end, rather than a template.

Swapping clay for willow, here is the end result, before and after stickering. This was my first time using a drawknife for most of the work. It is so much more satisfying and efficient than my first attempts with a plane, but easy to get wrong at first. For the weird toe I used progressively smaller sanding drums in a drill.

The side profile looks ok to me, but then I see the toe and just recoil! But it feels ok to pickup, even if it is a bit heavier than I like. I will have to wait and see how it plays.

Final measurements:
Toe: 19 � 29 mm
Edge: 35 mm
Swell: 61 mm
Shoulder: 15 mm
Weight: 2 lbs 11 oz

The computer simulation of this one is a little bit off (even if the weight is spot on), because it is hard to recreate the weird toe as it falls between the grid points I use to define the shape.

COM: 321 mm
COP: 231 mm
Node 1: 182 mm
Node 2: 112 mm
Weight: 2 lbs 10.8 oz

If you define the middle as the area between the COM and node 2 location (arguable), then it is 119 mm long. On the previous angular bat, the same length was 110 mm. So I did manage to lengthen the middle�by a whopping 9 mm!

InternalTraining · « **Reply #51 on:** August 25, 2021, 10:29:32 PM »

^ This is some top-notch, out of the box thinking and execution!!!!

InternalTraining · « **Reply #52 on:** August 25, 2021, 10:30:53 PM »

I have a Newbery Amplus that weighs 2-13.1 and I think that pattern would work well for weight reduction.

InternalTraining · « **Reply #53 on:** August 25, 2021, 10:33:29 PM »

Quote from: marsbug on August 25, 2021, 08:55:28 PM

For the weird toe I used progressively smaller sanding drums in a drill.

Are these same size drums as a Dremel? Can you post pics?

Chompy9760 · « **Reply #54 on:** August 26, 2021, 04:28:53 AM »

Loving your work here Marsbug! Great to see some thought and science being put into the design and manufacture. Previous evaluation of design is all done on 'feel', which is a very personal process. Nothing wrong with that, but I prefer scientific measurements.

A while back I was trying to work out nodes on a cricket bat using a 1/24th octave Real Time Analyser hooked up to a microphone. As I tapped up length of timber I could see the fudamental frequenciy, the harmonics, and the spot where tapping excited them the most and the least. When I substituted a bat, it got harder to see, but I was using my eye watching the RTA as the measuring device. Some specially designed software would have helped, but it was not to be.

The conclusion I came to was that the main thing that stops the toe of bat from vibrating was 'stiffness', or more directly, the depth of wood behind the face. This is restricted by regulations, but mainly by the way the toe is traditionally shaped to keep 'pickup' weight down, so my experiment ended there.

Your approach to have more depth at the the toe, but having it scalloped in places to keep weight down, seems like a smart way of doing it. I'm imagining a bat with a huge toe, but some king of deep multi diamond styled weight reduction as well, and wonder how that would affect it's resonant frequencies. It couldn't be manufactured with traditional methods, but it might be a step in the right direction.

Interesting stuff, please keep it up! I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking of bats in a mathematic and scientific way.

And even without the radical design, the bat looks great! I've never seen a grip like that - is it a clear rubber outer or what? Looks cool though

9mm difference might not sound like much, but if you can measure it, people should be able to feel it.

SOULMAN1012 · « **Reply #55 on:** August 26, 2021, 06:34:07 AM »

Quote from: marsbug on August 25, 2021, 08:43:58 PM

Well it's just something to take my mind off not being able to make bats anywhere nearly as nice as yours! They look great.

I've only just started playing again after 20 years out, so I think it'll take more than a strange bat shape to improve my batting!

You look to me like you have an eye for it mate and if you can produce these types of out there shapes you can certainly replicate the shapes that�s used on Mass.

marsbug · « **Reply #56 on:** August 26, 2021, 08:47:27 PM »

Quote from: InternalTraining on August 25, 2021, 10:33:29 PM

Are these same size drums as a Dremel? Can you post pics?

I did have a go with a Dremel, but it was far too fierce - combination of the speed (even slowed down) and the roughness.

So I went back to these things, that I used a lot with my first bat, but not since:
http://custombats.co.uk/cbforum/index.php?topic=48259.msg768802#msg768802

marsbug · « **Reply #57 on:** August 26, 2021, 09:02:01 PM »

Quote from: Chompy9760 on August 26, 2021, 04:28:53 AM

Loving your work here Marsbug! Great to see some thought and science being put into the design and manufacture. Previous evaluation of design is all done on 'feel', which is a very personal process. Nothing wrong with that, but I prefer scientific measurements.

A while back I was trying to work out nodes on a cricket bat using a 1/24th octave Real Time Analyser hooked up to a microphone. As I tapped up length of timber I could see the fudamental frequenciy, the harmonics, and the spot where tapping excited them the most and the least. When I substituted a bat, it got harder to see, but I was using my eye watching the RTA as the measuring device. Some specially designed software would have helped, but it was not to be.

The conclusion I came to was that the main thing that stops the toe of bat from vibrating was 'stiffness', or more directly, the depth of wood behind the face. This is restricted by regulations, but mainly by the way the toe is traditionally shaped to keep 'pickup' weight down, so my experiment ended there.

Your approach to have more depth at the the toe, but having it scalloped in places to keep weight down, seems like a smart way of doing it. I'm imagining a bat with a huge toe, but some king of deep multi diamond styled weight reduction as well, and wonder how that would affect it's resonant frequencies. It couldn't be manufactured with traditional methods, but it might be a step in the right direction.

Interesting stuff, please keep it up! I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking of bats in a mathematic and scientific way.

And even without the radical design, the bat looks great! I've never seen a grip like that - is it a clear rubber outer or what? Looks cool though
9mm difference might not sound like much, but if you can measure it, people should be able to feel it.

This is really interesting! The one thing that I have no idea of yet is how accurate these simulations actually are. There are a few simplifications, which on their own I'd think wouldn't have much effect, but perhaps all together means the results could be out. Although just by going back to how they feel and look (all I have to go on usually), I think I'd agree with the pickup (Centre of Mass - COM) results. I'd need a set up like yours I guess to check the nodes. The COP could be done with a bat mallet, but I'd have to make sure that the bat was supported exactly as assumed in the simulations (defines the pivot point).

I must admit that I do like reading up on the theory behind bats (and hope to keep applying it), but am still always drawn to the hand-made bats we see on here, with their swooping lines. Which brings me onto the last bat I've made...

And the grip is a Kookaburra Concept silicone one. It feels really nice when you're shadow batting without gloves! When wearing gloves, it feels a bit thicker than a normal grip to me. And the actual grip when batting hasn't been a problem so far either. I just went for it for being transparent to shamelessly cram another logo under it, rather than anything else.

marsbug · « **Reply #58 on:** August 26, 2021, 09:31:23 PM »

The fourth and final bat (so far) in this series from me. And it's my favourite.

This one was mostly to see if I'd improved in making bats over the last 12 months. I made myself just use a drawknife and spokeshave, so I took my time and enjoyed it.

I started out this time with a Red Ink X* part-made, so the nicest piece I've tried so far. And what a huge piece of wood it was! Much less done to it than the previous ones I tried.

And side on to show the pretty big bow.

The design this time wasn't to be driven by the simulations, rather by just kind of being inspired by some recent shapes that I've seen and liked over the last year. I wanted a little bit of a duckbill toe, middle to high sweetspot, reasonably (but not huge) edges, and an a bit of an offset between maximum edge and middle. Here is the rough shape after a first pass.

But this thing came in at 2 lbs 14 oz, which was just far too heavy for me. So it was back to the workbench we went.

At first I tried just a bit of concaving, and bit more off the toe. But that only took off 2 oz, which still left it too heavy. So I took the edges down about 3 mm, and then had to reshape the whole thing to keep it looking how I wanted. But here is the shape and weight I was happy with, before final sanding and buffing.

And then the final bat with stickers, binding (and tape) and grip.

Final measurements:
Toe: 17 - 24 mm
Edge: 36 mm
Swell: 59 mm
Shoulder: 14 mm
Weight: 2 lbs 10.4 oz

Because this was more along the lines of other shapes already out there, I wondered how it would compare in the simulations.

COM: 318 mm
COP: 225 mm
Node 1: 174 mm
Node 2: 110 mm

So, overall this shape performs not too far off my previous bat (with the weird trident toe). Interestingly the COP is almost perfectly in line with the swell position, which means that if I ever hit one there it should feel great (no rebound) as well as flying! The middle isn't quite as high or long, but is slightly thicker. This is definitely the bat I want to use the most now, and can't wait to give it a go when I get chance.

That's all my bats to date. Just have to see how long I can manage to hold out getting a few more part-mades!

Ayrtek Cricket · « **Reply #59 on:** August 28, 2021, 08:07:31 AM »

This is what the forum is all about, superb effort @marsbug and a great topic for us all to follow 👏

Author Topic: First home made bat - designed by artificial intelligence (Read 27678 times)

InternalTraining

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InternalTraining

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SOULMAN1012

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marsbug

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marsbug

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marsbug

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InternalTraining

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InternalTraining

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InternalTraining

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Chompy9760

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SOULMAN1012

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marsbug

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marsbug

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marsbug

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Ayrtek Cricket

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