What is the point to weight and shim testing for epee?

[shlepzig]

I have been pondering the epee tip problem for some time. All the pain and suffering we go through to keep our tips in trim.

Then I wondered:

Why do we have a weight test AND a shim test?

I don't see any situation where I can excert more than 750G of force (arguably this is what .75N or whatever) and not produce the necessary travel on the tip?

What is the purpose of both, if the spring is sufficiently strong to keep the tip from lighting when the weight test is performed what is the travel test protecting in the game (other than being the cause of way too many failed weapons tests and niggling with weapons before a tournament).

Plese don't flame me, I just want to be educated.

Shlep.

[DHCJr]

They don't want to turn it into Foil. They have been seriously trying to have travel for Foil also. In fact, it made it into the rules, but they didn't send out the specifications to the manufacturers. The travel was going to be 2mm.

Considering how little hitting with 750 grams is, any hit could rock the tip enough to set off the light, if there was no travel. Most hits are at least 3 times that much.

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

That explains why the really really good epeeists hit so light you dont notice.

[shlepzig]

Thanks DHC,

That is starting to make sense. So the measurement is really making sure that the moves the distance from the top to the contact. The shim is really just the way to make sure that it travels from the end of travel to a distance after that travel, and it is measured as the total gap minus the shim.

The physical reason this is measured is to ensure that a non-trivial bump to the tip is required to set the tip off.

It seems to me that the debounce time is another way of measuring an aspect of triviality.

Shlep.

[KD5MDK]

Except with a 40ms simul window, any meaningful debounce time will be a substantial fraction of that. Not sure if that would really impact the game, but it might.