By Wang Hsin Chen, Racket R&D Department

Early badminton rackets were mostly made entirely out of wood. As time evolved, the choice of material for the frame and shaft has changed from wood to metal, then to today’s mainstream—carbon fiber. However, there seems to be almost no handles made out of materials other than wood.

After three years of development, VICTOR has made a resounding breakthrough in the structure and material selection and launched FREE CORE synthetic handle technology. The golden-ratio hollow suspension structure brought by FREE CORE technology releases more space in the cap area to make the shaft more flexible and further reinforce the controlling performance.

The R&D team of VICTOR used the professional ANSYS simulation software to compare the shock resistance performance of FREE CORE’s shock-absorbing design and traditional wooden handle. The result shows that the hollow suspension structure of FREE CORE absorbs shock way better than wooden handles, providing the users with ultimate comfort when holding rackets.

At the beginning stage of development, the R&D team once tried to have the cap and handle integrated into one piece using synthetic material, but it ended up creating a similar hitting experience to traditional wooden handles. Then the researchers experimented different synthetic materials and used hollow suspension structure and carbon fiber to build the front end of racket handle. The comparison result showed that the two structures make entirely different hitting experience. After 3D printing testing and material testing such as PC and ABS, nano-composite nylon stands out as the final choice of material because of its incredible durability that can easily take over 20,000 swings.

It was once thought that the handle was made for only holding. However during the development process, it’s found that handles are an important factor that determines the hitting experience. FREE CORE is now applied in ARS-PUNCHH of Speed series, DRIVEX 9X and DRIVEX R of All-Round series, and will be integrated into more products in the future to create endless possibilities.