Snooker Balls – How They Are Made

Quality Matters when it comes to Snooker Balls

The quality of the Snooker Balls becomes very important as a player gets more proficient at the game. Snooker is a very psychological game and having confidence in the quality of your Snooker Equipment can be the difference in maintaining that competitive edge. Many top players carry their own sets with them.

For the uninitiated a snooker ball is a colored ball that is used in the game of snooker.
A white Cue Ball is struck with a Snooker Cue in an attempt to knock a coloured ball into one of six pockets on a Snooker Table. Initially Snooker Balls were carved from wood. Unfortunately wood did not stand up to the rigorous treatment of multiple games and therefore a better product was needed.

Manufacturers started to produce hand lathed Billiard Balls from cured Elephant tusks. Of course, it is obvious today that that was not a desired material for volume production, so a prize was offered to scientists to come up with a planet friendly alternative. This gave rise to Celluloid which is generally regarded to be the first thermoplastic and the first widely used replacement for ivory.

The Rise of Synthetics
Currently Snooker Balls are cast from man-made resins and then machined to a smooth and ultimately polished finish.

Phenolic and Polyester are the two Resins most used in Snooker Ball production
Phenolic resin is the most durable and is used in the production of the higher-quality balls. Phenolic Resin is scratch and chip resitant and maintains a high polish.

Methods of Production
Snooker Ball castings are manufactured by first heating the liquid resin which is then poured into flexible latex molds. The second and more preferred method for quality is by forcefully injecting the liquid latex into the mold. This method eliminates the forming of air bubbles thereby producing a higher quality cast.
There are two types of molds used in manufacture, the single mold which casts the balls individually and the chain mold which, as it suggests, casts multiple balls at a time in a chain. They are then broken from their molds and machine lathed.

Because Snooker Balls are subject to impact during the course of play, the liquid resin is more often pre-colored. This ensures the balls retain there color in the event of minor scratches and abbrasions.

Resin moulding is a precise casting method however, there is still a minute variance in there individual weights. For this reason the finished balls are then weighed and batched to create the most uniform sets. 

The production of top quality sets of Snooker Balls is a proud tradition and Saluc, a Belgian company producing Snooker Balls since the 1960s, continue to hand check every ball that leaves their factory.