#Inside Factory

[xtruss]

Wilson worker Lindsey Kiene cuts leaf-shaped panels that are tapered at both ends. These will be sewn together to make the iconic oblong shape of the football, a key feature that reduces the ball’s wake and drag.

Step Inside The Factory Where The NFL’s Footballs 🏈 🏈 🏈 Are Made

Few Have Seen Inside Wilson’s Facility where Dozens of Expert Craftspeople Meticulously Put Together a Product Whose Design Hasn’t Changed For About a Century.

— By Terry Ward | Photographs By Christopher Payne | February 9, 2024

What’s more American than cheering as your football team sends a long bomb tightly spiraling toward its end zone target? It’s a tradition that stretches back to the late 19th century.

While today’s “pigskin” is no longer made with the pig’s bladder of football’s late-1800s origins (all pro and collegiate footballs are now constructed from cowhide leather with synthetic rubber interiors), the shape and dimensions of the NFL football have remained the same for roughly 100 years.

Sewn Footballs are sent down this conveyor to the lacing department at the Wilson factory in Ada, Ohio.

Leather arrives every week from the Horween Leather Company in Chicago. The leather is stamped to give it a pebbly feel, and tiny W’s are embossed on the leather to ensure authenticity.

NFL and NFC names are stamped in foil on leather panels before being sewn together.

That the design from a century ago still perfectly suits the needs of today’s sport is a kind of “historical accident,” says Dr. Rabindra Mehta, chief of the experimental aero-physics branch at NASA Ames Research Center. “Compared to a baseball, a football is a more aerodynamic shape by design.”

Footballs are made from four individual panels of leather, leaf shaped and tapered at both ends, which are sewn together inside out. Next, the leather is steamed so that it becomes soft enough to turn right side out. An air bladder is then inserted and the football is laced together by hand.

A football’s shape is not actually a ball in the spherical sense of the word, but a prolate spheroid: oblong, with pointed ends that make it easier to grip. This shape and the way air flows around it helps the football to travel great distances.

The panels move to the stitchers, like Stephen Brownlow here, who sew the panels into halves and then sew the halves together with heavy brown polyester thread to make an inside-out football. Sewing them inside out makes the seam invisible and more durable.

Characteristics of the football’s surface–including the pebbling of the leather, the stitching of the panels, and the laces themselves–also allow airflow to stay attached longer and minimize drag, compared to something spherical like a baseball ⚾️.

Picture a baseball traveling right, with air traveling past, moving left—this would be what’s called laminar flow, where air travels in a regular, smooth path. In a controlled environment (like a wind tunnel) the airflow would go straight left until it meets the ball, where it bends around until it reaches the “far side” of the ball (this point is called the “apex”). Then the air returns to traveling straight left, past the ball, without touching that far side of the ball 🏀 ⚽️ .

When this happens, there’s a pressure difference between the front and back of the sphere which results in drag, the force that slows the ball down as it’s flying through the air. Golf ball manufacturers tackle this on spherical golf balls by dimpling the ball’s surface to help airflow stay attached longer, reducing drag, therefore letting the ball fly farther.

Keaton Miller, a turner, has the strenuous task of turning the ball right side out. To make the job easier, they use a steam box to loosen the leather and a pneumatic hammer to make the pointed ends more pliable before it is reversed forcibly by hand on a metal pole.

Left: The turner finishes by rolling the seams on the pole to flatten them out. An experienced turner can do this in about 30 seconds.

Right: These Wilson GST balls, the official ball of over 180 NCAA programs and 54 high school football state associations, are ready for lacing.

The thin layer of air on the ball’s surface is called a boundary layer, and a turbulent boundary layer creates turbulent flow—where a football’s design shines. Air meeting a football, with its textured surface and curved shape, would flow around the ball, staying attached longer to its surface than it can on a baseball’s. If the air is flowing left (and the ball is moving right) the air will move up, left, and down along the football’s bowed surface.

While the air may not hug a football’s curves all the way across, airflow does remain attached past its apex, resulting in a minimal wake and less drag. On a baseball, the air only makes a connection on half the ball, creating more of a wake and drag.

Drag can be “challenging to predict, particularly in odd-shaped objects like a football,” says Anette (Peko) Hosoi, Pappalardo professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. Drag depends on the shape of the wake, which, in a football, can vary depending on such factors as its orientation through the air, the velocity at which its thrown, and surface roughness.

Left: Nicole Tedrow, a lacer, inserts a polypropylene bladder into the ball and pushes a nipple through a small hole so the ball can be inflated. The lacers use an awl to pull the laces through the holes and close up the football.

Right: The final step is molding. Nearly completed footballs are placed inside a pressurized chamber that molds them to the correct, uniform shape, removing any residual lumps, crinkles, or rough edges, and inflates them to their correct pressure at 12.5 – 13.5 Psi.

Density of the surrounding air–a function of air temperature–also affects the boundary layer of a football and in turn its aerodynamics, Hosoi says.

“Warm air is less dense than cold air. If the air is less dense, there is less drag, so footballs may fly further on warmer days,” she says, adding that the phenomenon has been well documented in baseball, which clocks more home runs during hot and humid weather than the contrary.

A tight, spiraled throw wobbling not at all is indeed a thing of beauty, no matter the weather around it.

”The axis of the spin is aligned with the direction the ball will go,” says Mehta, likening it to the way a bullet flies. ”That’s what the quarterbacks are really good at doing.”

Left: These are the actual footballs that will be used in Super Bowl LVIII. The official balls are waiting to be stamped with the winning team logos pending the outcome of the AFC and NFC Championships, and shipped out early so the teams will be able to practice with them.

Right: These cut brass dies were used to emboss the Super Bowl LV logo in 2020.

[naq-k1n]

the best haircut ever

[sorormaior]

rest in pieces emperor’s children you would have loved disposable vapes

[lovesodeepandwideandwell]

The problem is Pixar movies used to have distinct aesthetics. This one's about cars! That one's in the ocean! This is a trash compactor robot in space! Now every single Pixar movie is set in a primary colored fantasy/sci-fi world with anthropomorphic blob creatures that are probably blue. Why would I want to go watch yet another of those.

[w1lmuttart]

The factory tour 👀

[herecomesthementalmeltdown]

>triangle factory

>look inside

>circles

[snail-speed]

Kind of insane that this website's Moral OCD machine worked so efficiently that nowadays scammers pretending to be Gazans trying to evacuate can just continue to send endless asks and tag hundreds of people in spam posts and nobody's been allowed to question it for months because all out of sudden this website decided that doubting the veracity of an account with posts copied from elsewhere sending asks demanding money in broken English was condoning genocide.

[where-is-nubby]

nubby putty caves

Today Nubby is in the Nutty Putty Cave

[fireheartwraith]

Just randomly remembered that I too am from a town where a lot of people got sick and died because they worked with a dangerous substance but had no knowledge of its dangers and so no safety measures but the rich people that were profiting off of their labor did know about it and didn't tell the workers because they didn't want to stop making money until it finally came to light when people started dropping dead or getting really sick and all of them worked in the factories and now there's a museum in honor of the victims and work safety seminars to elementary school children. And now I'm psychoanalysing why Law is my favorite character

[monbons]

Carry On Countdown Day 25: Truce

"Truce," Baz says, looking in my eyes. "Truce," I say, sounding much less certain. "Until we know the truth," he adds. I nod. Then he taps our joined hands. "An Englishman's word is his bond!"

~Carry On, Rainbow Rowell

Today's pocket surprise: Baz's wand

@carryon-countdown

[meggannn]

my take on the severance finale drama is. i think outie vs innie is a smokescreen because i still view them as the same person, and as long as the characters continue to see it as a “me vs you” problem, they take their eyes off the real enemy, lumon, who convinced/continue to force them to make that choice in the first place. that made this episode very frustrating to watch for me lol (even though i think it was in character all around, that is not a complaint)

if i had to pick a “side,” i am more pro helly and pro gemma than i am pro either mark. both because i want the best for them, want more of them, and think they represent more interesting situations regarding severance, but also because i really am hoping severance stops being the mark show to let them drive instead for a while

[emotionalsupportrodent]

what in the angelic looking fuck

[fat-tundra-64]

ARTIFICIAL

[happi-dreams]

sorry for the lack of posting, got the ppt brain rot from last year smacking me in the head again —so a lil wip !! technically a redraw of my interpretation (kinda au cause they save as many people as they can) of player!

they’re silly !! as is my trademark for all mcs i create

[tonydaddingham]

loudly criticising gaiman's odd as fuck, self righteous, parasocial, "im always right and you're wrong and stupid" behaviour on this platform with his fans, but then simultaneously coming full circle and recreating that behaviour yourself, is funny to me in ways i can't describe

[marlynnofmany]

Hm yes I see. Today we make our own luck.