Wilson Baiardo for badminton stringing

Thanks for your reply. I am going to ask my original supplier who is a Wilson Ambassador & tennis coach / agent in the South of England who may be able to get me one or two ? Probably doubtful, but will give him a try.
My machine included 2 tools storage units + set of tools but no load spreaders at that time, presume they have included it on the newer machines.
I don’t find the cheaper ones sold on E bay last for very long. ABS ones would be really useful.

 

Never string a racket from top to bottom!!! Always from bottom to top. Especially with higher tension this is important.

 

I always string bottom - top because people here says it can break rackets. But from people stringing top - bottom, they don't seem to mind. I can't afford to break a racket, I charge so low if I break a racket, all my profit will be gone in no time. I also string on a prince 2 points machine which is scary.

Can someone who string top-bottom chime up to say how many racket they break? Maybe we should start a thread about top-bottom or bottom. Or a survey...

It would be good to clarify if it's really safe top-bottom.

 

Let me say that I have strung rackets for customers over the last 16 years always top down, & have never broken a single rkt frame, over that time I have used an Exthree 2600, 6 point manual machine & over the last 3 years the Wilson Baiardo Electronic machine. It is important to examine each frame carefully for cracks before stringing, & to ensure it is not a fake, & if you follow this I feel that there should be few problems. Of course you need to be particularly careful that string tensions are within guidelines or at least no more than 10% above the maximum. It’s really all down to experience.

 

Yes, think a separate thread could clear a bit on the question of top/down or bot/up.
If arguments of tennis stringer are valid for t/d, why is that different to badminton rackets. Do both rackets not having the weakest points on top? Or do they have a different force accumulation because of design difference?
Tennis stringers can not understand the badmintion opinion.
Would good to find an explanation.
Greetings

 

Agree, my experience is almost entirely badminton rackets. The top of the racket is certain to be weaker than the bottom on both tennis & badminton, but a 6 point machine protects all frames very well under tension providing frames are not cracked, & the tensions are not too excessive.
I believe Yonex first introduced the top down instruction for badminton rackets around 2010, maybe they were having too many sent back for replacement ?

 

It would have been more obvious with older racket models, but it's still true for these modern rackets and I didn't want anyone to complain that it's different for modern rackets. The Tennis racket is narrower at the top, while the badminton racket is narrower at the bottom. Of course, there's exceptions to this, but this is still true for the great majority of racket heads.
Another difference is the split shaft of the tennis racket making it even stronger at the bottom half of the head.

Do you need more differences between Badminton and tennis rackets to justify a different approach to string them?

Furthermore, most of the time, a racket is not being strung, but played and the stress on the frame is less/more evenly distributed around the frame when it's in its original shape, so the question is how to preserve the original shape of the racket.
It has been discussed many times around here and it's quite easy to imagine what happens when pulling the cross strings. Remember, the sides of the racket are supported on the outside, not the inside. When a string is pulled, the frame is compressed in the area of that string, then you pull the next string and it's compressed there, and so on. When starting at the narrower part of the head, you start with the shortest string making the narrowest part even narrower. When moving to the next strings, the frame is slightly distorted. this leads to the forces pointing more outwards leading to less compression. This continues with each string until you reach the widest part of the head leading to a pear like head shape with the top being narrower than before and the bottom being similar to the original shape.
When starting at the bottom, the same happens, but not to the same extend and it will leave the top of the frame (Weaker? Maybe. Certainly more prone to irregular stress) in its original shape.

If you want to argue against this, I know there's a lot of details missing here, but either think about it extensively, run a simulation on what happens with the shape of the frame or just try it first.

 

How about the risk of stringing in two points machine. I noticed when stringing tennis racket if I do one piece and start de main from the bottom. The racket becomes squashed and the form is oval(very ugly, deserved to be on the wall of shame....). If I do around the world and the cross start from the top then the shape is good. I did a few times in tennis but no more. I was lucky it doesn't break. Even if tennis racket is tougher than badminton the tennis tension is twice as high so still can break. Maybe two points machines has to be more careful. Do you agree?

 

Some very useful analysis here & food for thought. I certainly feel that 2 point machines with very high tensions are quite risky for badminton rackets, the frame shape changes to round & is only restored when the crosses are pulled with at least 2lbs extra tension back to the correct oval shape. This stresses the frame which is not good. In my experience using only 2 point supports means the stringer can restring faster & more rackets means more profit ? However this is very risky & I would certainly not wish for my rackets to be strung in this manner. I believe a stringer can quickly lose his reputation if speed & profit is the priority. Dissatisfied customers using social media can quickly ruin a good reputation when things go wrong.

 

Yes of course you are right Kwun, you have to be very careful with all players rackets, maybe it’s time I made some changes & revert to bottom up for the cross strings.

 

I string mainly badminton racquets and also quite a lot of squash racquets. I would think the Baiardo Lite is a better machine for badminton than the full Baiardo since the lite version does have movable towers which were presumably specifically incorporated in the design for small headed racquets such as badminton. Some have mentioned it’s not necessary to have movable towers, I would disagree with them and now that Wilson has incorporated movable towers in the Lite machine’s design then it seems Wilson agree with me on this point. I learnt to string via the UKRSA and I’m sure that they stated you should always string crosses from top down and that is indeed what others recommend, see

for the Parnell advice and explanation for stringing top down so I have no idea why some on here are saying stringing crosses from the bottom up is preferable. I will go out of my way to string them from the top down, even using an around the world pattern to achieve this if necessary. Just my thoughts and I am sure that I will get a lot of people comment who disagree but I am simply stating how I was taught to do it.

 

We all say to go bottom up for the crosses because we're talking about badminton rackets, as experience has showed that it is safer.
Tennis rackets are usually strung top down, but they are much more resistant

 

As I said I mainly string badminton racquets and as you can imagine quite a few of them over the past 12 years I have been stringing. The course I went on never suggested bottom up crosses for badminton and top down for everything else. Maybe I should switch to bottom up crosses then for badminton? Fortunately I haven’t had any issues apart from one racquet that had a pre-existing crack and that wouldn’t have survived the stringing process whether the crosses were done up or down even on my 6 point clamp machine.

 

If i'm not mistaken, it used to be that every manufacturer instructed top-down crosses, but with tensions getting higher and higher at the pro level it appeared that top-down was breaking a lot of rackets, while bottom-up wasn't.

I think it makes sense too, as Mr. Parnell said, you want to go top down to limit deformation by pushing the stress towards the bottom part of the racket that is less likely to deform, but if it has less room to deform it also means it is more likely to break, which can be a problem with the thin badminton frames.

I wouldn't dare to tell you what you should or shouldn't do, but that is the story we have passed down for many generations (or at least a few years )

 

Sometimes you can't teach an old dog new tricks. When people are set in their old ways, if it ain't broke, then why fix it? Mentality, when I was taught back then that is how it should be. To be honest I was the same way. I do it like this, my customers don't complain, they keep coming back for my services, if it ain't broke, then why fix it?

Then thinking about, I do these things while stringing tennis rackets, why don't I try this? Then playtesting my work brought new ideas to ny stringing. Maybe unfortunately he doesn't play badminton, so to go on the court and feel his own work, it is only a job to him not a passion like most badminton stringers. I can do a 16 x 18 tennis racket in 15 minutes (or squash, maybe less) but a 22x21 badminton racket takes me double the time to string. If that is his mindset, I can understand seeing stringing as a job to make money to pay the bills. Badminton stringers who play tend to be more creative about their stringing and have more passion for their stringing, thinking how can I improve this? What will make this feel better? On the court you can ask these questions, standing behind a machine thinking about my next cheeseburger, where it is going to come from? You only see the money how you are going to pay for it. BTW, I actually do both of those things.

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