How Table Tennis Balls are Made

Pingsider is a web video series put out by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) that chronicles interesting aspects of the sport. In this episode, they travel to Double Happiness (DHS) in Shanghai, China, to learn how table tennis balls are made. Stacks and stacks of boxes of plastic discs are weighed, measured and checked for quality before heading off to be shaped into individual halves by round copper heads. Once they look like half of an actual ball they’re trimmed, paired and then glued together to form a complete ball. The finishing touch in the production process is removing the seam around the ball to leave it completely round, but they’re staying tight-lipped about that because it’s a trade secret. Before leaving the factory each ball needs to rest for a period of weeks before going through a rigorous quality control process that measures hardness, veer, weight and roundness. We had no idea so much work went into creating a single table tennis ball.