Tennis Ball Manufacturing Then and Now

After reading Rain’s recent piece on the manufacturing of ping pong balls I began to wonder how the balls for other sports are made. Tennis balls came to mind because Wimbledon is underway. 

I poked around and found manufacturing videos from 1961 and 2015. My take from watching them is that little changed in that time.  

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The process still involves pressing piece of rubber into semi-spherical shapes, vulcanizing them, joining them into spheres, and then covering them with felt. Parts of the process have been automated but tennis balls still require a fair amount of human labor .

The 2015 video shows the manufacturing process at Wilson’s factory in Thailand. The 1961 video shows balls being made for Wimbledon at Slazenger’s former plant in England . Slazenger still makes tennis balls but they’re now produced in the Philippines.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQyGg0LlT9c&w=560&h=315]Wilson’s factory near Bangkok, Thailand in 2015.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYCIkIyAYk4&w=560&h=315]This 1961 video about Wimbledon includes a tour of Slazenger factory in Yorkshire, England.


Source: core77

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