10" Gopher Ball on sale

[Hikel team 319]

I just came across this. 10" Gopher balls for $12.00

http://www.gophersport.com/pe/pe-equip-balls-foam/gopher-10-dia-coated-foam-ball-for-first-robotics-competition

Might be good for some of those off season events that are having a hard time getting boulders that have not found a drive train earlier in the season.

[Pauline Tasci]

As a team who bought a lot of these and had months of drive practice with them. The colored balls react differently than the grey balls from Andymark.

Their avg weight is no where near the avg weight of the grey balls.
Just make sure to keep that in mind as it affects how each team tuned their robot.

[Bob Steele]

As a team who bought a lot of these and had months of drive practice with them. The colored balls react differently than the grey balls from Andymark.

Their avg weight is no where near the avg weight of the grey balls.
Just make sure to keep that in mind as it affects how each team tuned their robot.

hmmm that is interesting. We also purchased gopher balls and I weighed some this morning. I have one official unused game ball left which weighs 280 grams

The average weight of several orange Gopher balls (also unused) was 279 grams.

I had several that were slightly more than 280 but most around 278--279 gms

I can't speak to the variability inweight of the game balls... I only have one left that has not been used.

If your tuning is significantly changed by a <5 gram difference i weight I would be wary... our shooter was not that picky.

[Mark Sheridan]

hmmm that is interesting. We also purchased gopher balls and I weighed some this morning. I have one official unused game ball left which weighs 280 grams

The average weight of several orange Gopher balls (also unused) was 279 grams.

I had several that were slightly more than 280 but most around 278--279 gms

I can't speak to the variability inweight of the game balls... I only have one left that has not been used.

If your tuning is significantly changed by a <5 gram difference i weight I would be wary... our shooter was not that picky.

That is what we got too. Our green gopher balls were 340 grams so we avoided tuning with those. We had one blue weigh 280 and another was 330 (which we excluded too). The rest were fine.

[sanddrag]

While the long-term durability proved to be much better than I originally expected for these game pieces, seeing this now makes me wonder why they couldn't sell us the grey ones for $12, especially considering the volume that FIRST did for them, and the past history (2012 game pieces).

[Chris is me]

While the long-term durability proved to be much better than I originally expected for these game pieces, seeing this now makes me wonder why they couldn't sell us the grey ones for $12, especially considering the volume that FIRST did for them, and the past history (2012 game pieces).

It's quite possible they are selling them at a loss to clear inventory. I imagine June is possibly their slowest month of the year for sales as summer programs that would use them have started and schools aren't stocking up for next year yet.

[Hallry]

As a team who bought a lot of these and had months of drive practice with them. The colored balls react differently than the grey balls from Andymark.

Their avg weight is no where near the avg weight of the grey balls.
Just make sure to keep that in mind as it affects how each team tuned their robot.

Relevant thread. (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=142213)

[jvriezen]

While the long-term durability proved to be much better than I originally expected for these game pieces, seeing this now makes me wonder why they couldn't sell us the grey ones for $12, especially considering the volume that FIRST did for them, and the past history (2012 game pieces).

I can think of several reasons why official game balls were not $12.

They had a limited market in terms of both audience and time frame. They can't accurately predict demand over time (from teams, off season events) and have to deal with either excess inventory or ramped up production rates (overtime, temp employees) depending upon how they project sales. They don't know how long a ball will last before being discarded due to average game play roughness and prototyping roughness.

Their supplier of raw materials will also be impacted in similar ways, and will likely raise the price due to a sudden high demand.

FIRST may have requested a higher level of quality control regarding tolerances for size, weight, compressability, skin friction, etc. than their normal tolerances (or lack of them).

Because they can't make colored balls when they are making FRC balls (in the same machinery) they have to raise the price of all of them-- so that's also why the gopher balls were higher priced during the season.

I'm guessing they over produced, expecting more orders for the color balls than they got, and now are trying to clear out the warehouse.

We purchased six and were very fortunate that we got random colors of three orange and three yellow, which directly matches our team's foam flame hat colors: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-3kzPhUUAAbmvK.jpg