Ok, in all honesty the way I have had it explained to me is that most of the carbons are made the same way. All the arrows for a given line come off the same tooling pretty much. The problem is the manufacturing process is not very consistent. So when you buy the more expensive arrows for a given manufacturer they are simply sorted better. So you are paying for increased quality control basically. The cheaper arrows just don't get looked at as hard so you don't really know what you are getting when you open up the box. It's sort of a crap shoot. However as far as they are made there is no large technical engineering gap between the cheap ones and the more expensive one.

Although when you switch from manufacturer to manufacturer, or in some cases from line to line there are some variations in the way they are made.

I haven't checked a bunch of carbon arrows in a long time, so they might be better than they used to be now. They get better every year. I just personally like the consistency I get with aluminums and have an arrow I like so I will stick with them until I don't have a choice anymore.

Paul