Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

Over 60% of our Balls have broke. Most in the past two days:ahh: . Try as we might to be gentile with them, it seems like they break easier than glass!

What about you guys? How bad is your team's collection of Orbit Balls?:confused:

How allusive they seem to be doesn't help either!:(

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

I think all of ours have at least one broken band. I know of two that are made entirely of broken bands. I actually like the fact that ours are broken because it means that there won't be any surprises when we get to competitions and we have to play with broken Orbit Balls.

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

50% of our balls are broken, but considering we only have 2, that's pretty good I guess.

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

Makes those of us planning off season events wonder where we're going to get enough intact ones. Anyone come up with a decent substitute in terms of size and weight? Hopefully, easier to source and more durable.

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

Yes. 228 came up with a way to make your own, 980 is arranging to make kits to make them available... Where've you been the last few weeks?:p

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

I've been around and seen that. :rolleyes: However, the prospect of making hundreds of balls for an event is NOT going to be the first choice. And I'm pretty sure it won't even make the top 10.

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

After March, Blip Toys will again have Orbit balls in stock that they can sell to anyone with a federal business tax ID# (that includes 501(c)3 non-profit organizations) in a minimum order quantity of 1200.

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

were attempting to design a mechanism to collect balls with out damaging them, and its hard to do since they are so damaged to start with...

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

I am curious to see the price for this but in the end I do not know how useful this will be. Even at a low cost per ball we are still looking at a few thousands of $s just for the balls. Maybe invitationals can share the cost. I am hoping we find a partner for our invitational that is knowlegable and skilled in making orbit balls :rolleyes: ;)

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

The kits from a couple of Team 980 parents have been for sale for almost two weeks now. See: Lunacy Game Balls - The Complete Kit

The kit includes pre-cut lexan strips, pre-sewn fabric tubes, high-strength adhesive patches for bonding the strips together -enough for ten balls. Most of the tedious, time-consuming effort in making the balls is already done.

These balls are MUCH more durable than the kit balls. We have not broken one yet - even after kicking it around outside. They bounce almost identically to the Orbit ball, but are about 10-15% stiffer in compression.

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

I offered to my coaches to get the material and make one, but they said no.. but the orbit balls are soo weak! I will be truely shocked if one of them makes it fully intact to the end of the week!

And I don't think it will be efficient to make however many balls for competitions. The sheer amount of manpower and hours.... and I don't think the balls sold after march will help with our Traverse City Competition in Feb..........

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

We were able to buy 17 balls. We hid 6 of them away immediately, and left the other 11 out for shooting practice, prototyping, and testing. Of the 11 we left out, every single one has at least 2 (usually more) cracks in it that we've had to repair. Fortunately we have some new ones hidden away that we pulled out last night!

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

Out of curiosity, how is one "gentile" with a ball? I didn't know one could be not of the Jewish faith towards an inanimate object...

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

How many balls do you predict will be crushed per match on average? There are six robots moving around and any balls trapped between a robot and any solid surface (side wall, other robot, other trailer) will be crushed. I can easily see tens of balls crushed per match, and that's without trying :)

We have made large mecanum wheels where each roller is a rover wheel and the robot is named Shredder. We rule.

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

sorry, I cant spell apparentally ^^

and as Oddjob said, Alot of balls are bound to break during matches. I can imagine it now... A few hundred orbit balls piled high into a school garbage bins, overflowing with random pieces of cloth and plastic.... the remains of what was once an orbit ball.....

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

we got 3 and they all have broken bands, throwing them at our trailer really kills them... :D

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

really? Most of our broken balls were either thrown, missed the trailer, and smasked against the wall, or ran into by our (team 288 Robodawgs and 216 Robodawgs OTL) robots and get smashed between them or a wall

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

Has anyone had any luck repairing broken bands on the official orbit balls yet? Has anyone tried?


I was going to try creating a "splint" for the break with strips cut from a plastic milk jug and some pop-rivets tonight... we'll see how that goes.

Re: Annoyed with the Lunacy balls!
 

Given the fragility of the Orbit Balls, FIRST will probably need to implement something like this at the competitions. I don't think FIRST has "millions" of these balls, so repaired Orbit balls will likely be on the field.

Please share your results - does the splint actually work, does it change the properties of the ball, etc.