Spinning, Flo'ing and adjustable drivers

backinit I am starting to lean towards the snake oil camp.

Welcome to the club.

Ok, so I browsed through that article by Tutleman and pulled out some excerpts that tell the tale.
[MY COMMENTS]

…as viewed by an engineer… [That tells a story in and of itself]

There is no provable best direction for aligning the spine. Theories differ, and the experimental evidence is not conclusive.

There are plenty of theories why spine alignment should work. We examine them. None fits the data…
1. You should align so that the direction the shaft 'wants' to bend is in the target plane at impact. This sounds nice and intuitive, but is never offered with a sound physical rationale -- and I could not find any. Not viable. [NOT]

2. Placing the NBP in the target plane allows the hands to square the clubface at impact. This is plausible, based on the assumption that the shaft bend is in the target plane in the vicinity of impact. Unfortunately for the theory, the shaft bend is not in the target plane during the tens of milliseconds before impact. Not viable. [NOT]

3. When the shaft bends during the downswing, any bend not in the spine plane or NBP plane produces forces that tend to move the clubhead out of the swing plane. This is definitely a true statement. The question here -- so far unanswered -- is whether those forces are large enough to produce the observed results of misalignment. Possibly viable. [MAYBE]

4. Since the shaft bend at impact is in the vicinity of the clubhead's center of gravity (CG), align the NBP with the CG -- using the same rationale as #2 above. This theory suffers from an assumption contrary to fact. The shaft bend at impact is not in the direction of the CG. Not viable. [NOT]

5. The advantage is in feel at and after impact, where the clubhead "rebound" from the ball is in the target plane. This is consistent with experimental results based on feel. It is not as clear in explaining experimental results reporting performance differences. Possibly viable. [MAYBE]

6. Any consistent alignment strategy results in a consistent set of clubs, and that is the best we can expect to do. This does not explain why experiments tend to show that certain alignment positions seem to be better than others. Not viable. [NOT]

NOTE: That’s a whole bunch of “not viable” and a couple “possibly viable”, but nothing is definitely viable.

…at least one anecdotal test came out with a 10:30-4:30 orientation winning for some golfers. The vast majority view 10:30-4:30 or 7:30-1:30 as worst-case alignments.

We still don't know how big spine has to be to affect shots.

Residual bend does not affect the golfer's shot nor feel. [I just put this in here because, hey, if the guy can’t use proper English, then can we really rely on his findings?]

[Here’s one I agree with!] “…don't confuse 'because I can' with 'it matters in terms of tangible results'”

Let us assume for a moment (the assumption turns out to be true) that the off-centeredness of the hit is monotonically related to the size of the spine and the degree to which it is misaligned. ("Monotonically" means that, any time you increase the spine or the misalignment, the off-centeredness increases.) [This can only be assumed if we also assume that golfer’s all have 100% repeatable swings. Anyone here wanna be the first to say their swing is 100% repeatable?]

I go out of my way to order shaft models that I know to have negligible spine -- then I just don't worry about aligning. [Hell, Dave even says here that he doesn’t align his shafts. I guess that says enough.]

[So, I guess that'll lay that to rest. If Dave doesn't align his and it really only helps if your swing is 100% repeatable, then it's of virtually no use to 99.999999999% of the golfing world.]

sdandrea1 no reason you couldn't pull and Flo after finding the correct f.a./setting. But then this is a fitting issue more than it is a spine/nbp/Flo issue. Fitting the loft by adjusting the f.a. is the wrong way to go IMO. I want the driver sitting correctly to suit my eye (slightly open) when it's naturally soled. I don't want to monkey with the f.a. to get to where I like it by turning it before addressing the ball. Adj. drivers don't throw out Flo, quite the opposite, you now have tons more variables where you wouldn't ever know if Flo made any appreciable difference, every adjustment is an adjustment away from Flo and also a f.a. adj. At the same time. What I did with f6 is find the f.a. and flight I liked the most, pulled, flo,d and reinstalled. Critical to get the f.a. correct with the right loft,not getting an ill fit f.a. just to get to a certain loft.

Oh yeah, did I see a diff after flo=no, but I know it's done and nothing is left to chance, and all whammies are ruled out. Only on a poorer quality shaft does Flo make an appreciable difference, I've seen it on some shafts as recent with an Apollo black steel (Hireko,s stepless shaft painted black with a gawdy logo). I aligned none of the shafts (no nbp or Flo) and went logo down on the set to avoid seeing any of that gawdy logo. All were fine, less the 7i, which I could not turn over to save my life and most shots hung right. Pulled shaft, found nbp and aligned and walaaa. No more rights and could turn over right to left. It can absolutely make a difference, but as I stated it's only on a poorer quality shaft, which may simply be a QC issue, and ultimately I'm guaranteeing no whammies!

sdandrea1 lol, of course, but when the majority of your center face contacts are doing something other than what your other center face contacts are doing within the same round and every round after that and that ball flight is not consistent with your miss, which is a hook or a pull, sometimes both, then something is amiss. Again not one or two rds, several, weeks, which for me is 20 or more rds. I'm not here to pimp flo, but to point out that whammies exist and this was an example of it....and is and will be the reason why I always align. I could care less if anyone else does it, and as I stated with my f6, after flo there was no appreciable difference. So I'm not blindly a proponent of flo. Super consistent shafts don't need it, but super consistent shafts have a bad apple from time to time. That's all, carry on

I'd buy more into it if I thought my swing was really, really repeatable. When my iron shots misbehave, they never seem to be with one club, and I can usually troubleshoot it back to one of my common mistakes. The other thing that causes my doubt is the number of quality shots and good rounds I have had with pure junk in my bag.

backinit With all the shaft spinning and flo'ing that I've read about (and done myself) on the "old site", how do you address installing new shafts on adjustable drivers? I am starting to lean towards the snake oil camp. I mean you can install the shaft in the adapter at neutral setting at flo, but then discover that maybe that setting isn't really the best for you and you need to make an adjustment.

I have wondered for years about how OEM adjustable drivers off the rack might have an issue with spines, flo et al.

It is all about the shaft. Get a shaft with little or no spines and alignment changes are not an issue. I have a Taylormade M2 that I installed a UST Mamiya ATTAS 5 International Series 1000 and it is sweet. I ran it through my NF2 and spines are negligible which means flex is consistent regardless or orientation in the head. I did buy the head only so I can't comment on the stock TM shaft.

I am not saying that all OEM adjustable drivers might have an issue with adjustments but shafts with large spines will vary in flex with different orientations in heads. Hopefully the OEM companies have taken this into consideration with the adjustable head drivers. Perhaps someone who has pulled a shaft on one of these could comment.