DEVELOP3D - Technology for the product lifecycle

Football from the 1950s: not exactly round

As a fan of the beautiful game, it makes me feel a bit sick to use the word ‘soccer’ in the headline. The thing is I don’t want to confuse our American readers as this whole post is about how perfectly round a football is, and American footballs aren’t, er, exactly round. Now having probably insulted our friends from over the pond, I’ll get on with the story.

Application Engineers at Phase Vision have used their latest scanning technology to scan several footballs to see how round they are –  three match quality balls from Nike, Umbro and the current Adidas Jabulani World Cup ball – plus a cheap replica of the world cup ball, and a 1950s match ball – the type some of us remember from our childhood that literally took your head off when it got wet.

Adidas Jabulani World Cup ball: perfectly round

According to Phase Vision, FIFA regulations specify that a ball must be measured using 16 points, but that masks the true sphericity (or otherwise) of the ball. The use of only 16 measurement points was dictated by mechanical measurement approaches (using a contact arm or co-ordinate measuring machine) which were slow, and which distorted the ball during measurements.

So just how round were the balls? Only three of the balls scanned passed FIFA’s geometry tests for sphericity and size – the three world cup balls, including the replica ball.

Here’s the full story. It makes for an interesting read for fans of football, soccer and even those who made an art out of forging sick notes at school.

Read more…