Golf Manufacturing Tolerances

[jonyim]

Anyone know the manufacturing tolerances for drivers and woods for Callaway, Titleist and TaylorMade?

[JMiller]

Which tolerances are you looking for... COR, MOI, LOFT, LIE, LENGTH, SHAFT?

 

USGA Regulates the COR of club to ball at 0.830 (83%) a lot of companies will have them in the range of 80-82% to make sure they are in the rules, mostly has to do with a ball compression but somewhat to do with the faces as well, higher swing speeds have a lower COR as energy doesn't transfer as efficiently to the ball. USGA has research on their website about that.

 

Two of the USGA limitations on driver heads are size and MOI. The maximum driver head size is 460 c.c. plus a 10 c.c. tolerance making the absolute maximum legal size 470 c.c. The term c.c. stands for cubic centimeters. The maximum allowable driver head M.O.I. is 5900 g-cm² plus a tolerance of 100 g-cm² making the absolute maximum driver head MOI 6000 g-cm². The term g-cm² stands for grams per centimeter squared.

 

Loft well that is normally all over the map when you measure it, a stamped 9.5* could be as low as 8.5* and as high as 11.5* depending on the company for drivers. Lie angle on drivers rarely gets measured so don't know the variances in that. Fairway woods are probably simalar in terms of +/- 1 to 1.5* loft just depends really, these probably need get measured as well for exact loft. My irons are normally +/- 1* loft for all companies i have played and seen tested as well.

 

Length is usually pretty good, they have pre-cut stock shafts that go into the head so they are all the same for the most part.

 

A stock shaft will have variances in it probably worse then anything else, I have seen stock 'Stiff shafts' on a frequency machine have a CPM reading of anything from a Ladies Flex to a X-Stiff. The shafts they use are cheap make sure to have it CPM tested at the store before buying the shaft if you plan to keep the stock shaft.

[jonyim]

More specifically I want to know more about loft on drivers and fairway woods. Any companies which have certain tolerances?

[JMiller]

More specifically I want to know more about loft on drivers and fairway woods. Any companies which have certain tolerances?

 

I can give you a ball park but don't know the exact tolerances of each company individually, it is normally around +/- 2* for drivers, some companies get it down to +/- 1* on drivers but still a pretty big crap shoot without actually measuring the loft. The club builder that I always go to has a Adams F11 stamped 10.5* but it is measured to 11.2* most of the time they have more loft then what is stamped on them.

 

Golfsmith did a great write up on some testing that they have done for lofts on drivers and face angles.

--> http://www.golfsmith.com/display_page?page_num=cm_lp_mag0508_clubmaking_tip

 

As for fairway woods I have no idea and won't try to talk out of my a$$ like I do when it comes to the variances in fairway metals. My guess would have to be +/- 1* or so but I don't know for sure.

[Golfmanufaktur]

With drivers, it's sometimes getting ridiculous these days. I just had a brand name driver in the shop, that was supposed to have 11.5. It actually speced out at 14.5. Shafts normally are on the soft side of the spectrum. Most of them are at least one flex softer than a decent aftermarket product. And this is the same for drivers, fw metals, hybrids and irons.

 

If you want to have a perfectly build set of clubs, you have to go to a well known clubmaker, who builds by his own and doesn't just order to specs from OEM.

 

Regards

Michael