[Innova] The mythical Innova ROC

[hugheshilton]

DGU wants $14 to ship a champ roc to me, I have access to star ranchos and luster 30th anniversaries. Would these be anywhere near the champion roc stability or am I gonna have to find a deal on the champion for the (stays) OS roc slot?

I think Star Ranchos will be closer in stability to a fresh champ than the Luster 30th Anniversary is. Like Plastic Cannon said, a 30th Anniversary Roc is more like a slightly worn KC Pro or DX Roc. It's a very workable stability, but not nearly as overstable as a good Champion Rancho. I've only thrown a couple Star Ranchos, but they do have the reputation of being fairly overstable so I might try one of those to see if it fits your needs.

 

[DiscinFiend]

DGU wants $14 to ship a champ roc to me, I have access to star ranchos and luster 30th anniversaries. Would these be anywhere near the champion roc stability or am I gonna have to find a deal on the champion for the (stays) OS roc slot?

If you don't want to pay for a USDGC Champion Roc, get a Star Roc. If you want to be adventurous get a Taurus. The Taurus is literally penned RocX on the bottom. It's a Roc with a spacer (like the RocX3 is a Roc3 with a spacer). It comes in Champion plastic & has that nice mellow dome like a good KC/DX Roc. It feels more like a Roc in the hand than a RocX3.

 

[Alzyurpalz]

Thanks for the responses. My local shop has those white star ranchos with the peace fingers stamp so I'll probably pick one of those up.

 

[IronJack]

I picked up a couple Taurus. So far, RX>RX3, in the OS roc slot, although there wasn't enough wind for me to make the final call.

Feels and looks like a blunt nose Rancho.

I've never understood the whole "spacer" theory of disc components. If a spacer was put between the top plate (which makes the top of the of the flight plate) and the stripper plate (which makes the wing), then the core (which makes the inner rim and bottom of the flight plate) would also be equally spaced as the nose spacer from the top plate, meaning that the flight plate would be a 1/4" thick, or whatever the thickness of the nose spacer is - and they clearly are not. I'm not sure you can space a core (doesn't seem like it would work because it wraps done and connects to the bottom of the wing), but even if could, you'd expect to see an extra set of parting lines on the inner rim, as well as on the nose. I'm not an expert, so I'm not claiming to know definitively one way or the other, but "nose spacers" just don't make sense based on what I do know about the process.

 

[Dingus]

I picked up a couple Taurus. So far, RX>RX3, in the OS roc slot, although there wasn't enough wind for me to make the final call.

Feels and looks like a blunt nose Rancho.

I've never understood the whole "spacer" theory of disc components. If a spacer was put between the top plate (which makes the top of the of the flight plate) and the stripper plate (which makes the wing), then the core (which makes the inner rim and bottom of the flight plate) would also be equally spaced as the nose spacer from the top plate, meaning that the flight plate would be a 1/4" thick, or whatever the thickness of the nose spacer is - and they clearly are not. I'm not sure you can space a core (doesn't seem like it would work because it wraps done and connects to the bottom of the wing), but even if could, you'd expect to see an extra set of parting lines on the inner rim, as well as on the nose. I'm not an expert, so I'm not claiming to know definitively one way or the other, but "nose spacers" just don't make sense based on what I do know about the process.

Shhhhhh, don't question conventional understanding, you will just cause problems

 

[Van1]

I picked up a couple Taurus. So far, RX>RX3, in the OS roc slot, although there wasn't enough wind for me to make the final call.

Feels and looks like a blunt nose Rancho.

I've never understood the whole "spacer" theory of disc components. If a spacer was put between the top plate (which makes the top of the of the flight plate) and the stripper plate (which makes the wing), then the core (which makes the inner rim and bottom of the flight plate) would also be equally spaced as the nose spacer from the top plate, meaning that the flight plate would be a 1/4" thick, or whatever the thickness of the nose spacer is - and they clearly are not. I'm not sure you can space a core (doesn't seem like it would work because it wraps done and connects to the bottom of the wing), but even if could, you'd expect to see an extra set of parting lines on the inner rim, as well as on the nose. I'm not an expert, so I'm not claiming to know definitively one way or the other, but "nose spacers" just don't make sense based on what I do know about the process.

First time I have ever heard of spacers. Anyone have a definitive link on the "spacers" process?

 

[hugheshilton]

I picked up a couple Taurus. So far, RX>RX3, in the OS roc slot, although there wasn't enough wind for me to make the final call.

Feels and looks like a blunt nose Rancho.

I've never understood the whole "spacer" theory of disc components. If a spacer was put between the top plate (which makes the top of the of the flight plate) and the stripper plate (which makes the wing), then the core (which makes the inner rim and bottom of the flight plate) would also be equally spaced as the nose spacer from the top plate, meaning that the flight plate would be a 1/4" thick, or whatever the thickness of the nose spacer is - and they clearly are not. I'm not sure you can space a core (doesn't seem like it would work because it wraps done and connects to the bottom of the wing), but even if could, you'd expect to see an extra set of parting lines on the inner rim, as well as on the nose. I'm not an expert, so I'm not claiming to know definitively one way or the other, but "nose spacers" just don't make sense based on what I do know about the process.

I feel like the people who actually know about injection molding on here (there are 2 or 3 who have actual work experience in the industry) have said before that the whole "nose spacer" thing is just a bunch of BS invented by people who don't know how plastic molding actually works. I can't remember what thread that was in though.

Your arguments about why the "nose spacer" theory doesn't hold water make sense to me, but I've also never done any plastic molding. One question that would validate your theory: does either the RocX3 or Taurus use the Rancho Roc bottom mold piece? It should be easy to tell since it would have patent numbers if it does. In order to use a nose spacer, you would think they would need to create a new bottom mold piece to get the depth right, which I would think would negate any cost savings they would gain by using a spacer rather than just creating a new blunter wing piece.

 

[myllys]

The Taurus does have patent numbers.

 

[kevdiv48]

The Taurus does have patent numbers.

And has the remainder of the tooling spaced out identical to that of Rancho Rocs.

 

[93EXCivic]

Having patent numbers and the spacing being the same as the Rancho doesn't mean that it isn't a new bottom piece. I would guess that if the did make a new bottom piece the designer probably started with the CAD model for the Rancho and probably just left the numbers. So when it went to CNCing it would end up looking identical.

Sent from my LG-H910 using Tapatalk

 

[hugheshilton]

Having patent numbers and the spacing being the same as the Rancho doesn't mean that it isn't a new bottom piece. I would guess that if the did make a new bottom piece the designer probably started with the CAD model for the Rancho and probably just left the numbers. So when it went to CNCing it would end up looking identical.

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You can believe what you like, but that seems very unlikely to me. Innova has made or retooled a lot of molds in the last 5 years and hasn't put patent numbers on any of them. They explicitly took patent numbers off a bunch of molds. At the very minimum, even if they left the patent numbers on out of laziness, they would certainly add their web address. I mean I seriously doubt they would pay $10k for a new mold piece to be made without at least doing that. Does the bottom of the Taurus have the web address?

 

[IronJack]

no web address - tried to post pics from mobile, but not working....

 

[hugheshilton]

Here's the link IronJack tried to post: https://imgur.com/a/MEFOp

Thanks for the pics! Clearly the top mold piece is the same, but the wing mold piece definitely looks different to me (as in not just a "spacer"). Given that the discs look to be the same height and that's pretty clearly the Roc bottom mold piece (patent numbers in the same place, no embossed disc name, no web address), I think that's pretty definitive proof that it's a different wing mold piece.

 

[SD86]

Having patent numbers and the spacing being the same as the Rancho doesn't mean that it isn't a new bottom piece. I would guess that if the did make a new bottom piece the designer probably started with the CAD model for the Rancho and probably just left the numbers. So when it went to CNCing it would end up looking identical.

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If memory serves me correctly, one is required to remove patent numbers from a label (or physical mold, in this case) once the patent expires. So they can keep using the old mold piece after expiration, but a new (physical) mold made after expiration should not have the patent number on it. If this is not correct, please correct me.

 

[hugheshilton]

If memory serves me correctly, one is required to remove patent numbers from a label (or physical mold, in this case) once the patent expires. So they can keep using the old mold piece after expiration, but a new (physical) mold made after expiration should not have the patent number on it. If this is not correct, please correct me.

I *think* that law got reversed by a lawsuit a couple years after it was passed. A law saying exactly what you said was definitely passed (back in maybe 2009 or 2010?) which is when Innova started removing all their patent numbers. I believe a lawsuit got filed and eventually the law was overturned. This is why some molds like the Roc still have patent numbers; they hadn't gotten around to removing them yet when the law was overturned so they didn't bother. Mold pieces are expensive even if you still have the CAD files or whatever.

 

[ODRB]

Controlling patent ruling or no, new Innova molds don't have patent numbers across the board.

 

[Three Putt]

If memory serves me correctly, one is required to remove patent numbers from a label (or physical mold, in this case) once the patent expires. So they can keep using the old mold piece after expiration, but a new (physical) mold made after expiration should not have the patent number on it. If this is not correct, please correct me.

So there was a law on the books that said you could be liable for $500 for false marking of a patent, and having an expired patent on an item was one of the many ways you could falsely mark an item. In December 2009, the Court of Appeals ruled that the penalty was actually $500 per instance. Before that, nobody paid any attention becasue who was going to sue you for $500? Innova left the patent on new discs, probably becasue it had always been there so why not? All of a sudden, Innova wasn't on the hook for $500, they were on the hook for $500 per disc they sold.

The old law allowed anybody to sue on behalf of the U.S. Government and split the awards halfsies, so every ambulance chasing lawyer in the country started trolling Wal Mart for stuff with patent numbers on them. There was an explosion of lawsuits. Innova and Discraft both started scrubbing patent numbers off old molds.

In 2011, the America Invents Act changed the law. Having an expired patent on an item is no longer a violation, and to bring a suit you have to prove you suffered some sort of competitive injury due to the marking anyway. All the lawsuits disappeared.

tl;dr: The patent number thing was a 2010-11 phenomenon. Now it's no big deal for the patent number to still be on the Roc, but Innova no longer puts the patent number on new mold pieces.

 

[IronJack]

I'd add to that, that there was a patent case filed against Innova, so it wasn't just them getting ahead of the ball on the patent numbers issue before 2011 - they were prompted.

https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation_documents/3918967

 

[Three Putt]

I'm going off memory, but I'm 99.99% certain that Discraft was also sued. They and Innova were both a) guilty and b) staring down the barrel of a "filing for bankruptcy"-sized judgement. They were not alone; there were thousands of these lawsuits floating around. The reason the government stepped in and put an end to it was becasue it was going to put a lot of business out of business for a stupid reason. That, and it was bogging down the court system.

 

[wims]

Have anyone thrown Color Glow KCP Rocs lately? How does the material feel? How do they fly?


EDIT: Nevermind, I found this thread -> https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=127337