Carbon thickness in a blade : Did MyTT Assistant Administrator Stilltt bluder big time ?

[Football 73]

on August 1, 2023 6:12am
There is this rule about percentage of synthetic materials in table tennis blades: "2.4.2 At least 85% of the blade by thickness shall be of natural wood; an adhesive layer within the blade may be reinforced with fibrous material such as carbon fibre, glass fibre or compressed paper, but shall not be thicker than 7.5% of the total thickness or 0.35mm, whichever is the smaller." But do you know if 0.35mm is the total maximum or the maximum for each ply used in synthetic material?

on August 01 , 2023 9:04pm
adding the thicknesses of all composite plies, we get a number that cannot be more than 0.35mm.
Hipnotic answered the question there:stiltt - Alex Table Tennis - MyTableTennis.NET Forum - Page 1

LOL looking at the page you referred to, thats is not what Hipnotic said.

on ]June 18 18, 2021 at 4:31pm
The 7.5% and 0.35mm figures refer to just one reinforcement layer.

[James Z]

if you had two layers of 7.5% each, the total is 15% and that is OK.
Look like the rule was written with this setup in mind.

But I have seen blades with as many as 7 layers of composite material
This would mean each layer cannot more than 2.14% of total thickness
That is pretty thin LOL.

But my question is , why does someone other than manufacturer or blademaker care ?
How would an umpire test for this ? Because keep in mind that there is also no limit on the TOTAl thinkness (or width or height) of a blade.

I heard some umpires were actually giving problems to players because they do not understand that there is no limit on the TOTAl thinkness (or width or height) of a blade.