{in reference to team reactions, when encountering Rule G34}
Quote:
Originally Posted by MechEng83
Not the rule, but in discussion about inflating the game piece. I suggested to one of our sub-team captains when they couldn't find the nozzle adapter to inflate it that he get a group of freshmen to blow up the ball, and when one was out of breath, the next could take over. Ever the hygienic worrier, his response: "I don't know, that's a lot of mouths on the same ball." Some of the other student leaders snickered. Then he realized what he'd said and turned the same shade of red as the game piece.
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{Chuckle} good one!
An OT diversion, in response to solving how to blow up the ball, with a standard tire inflation nozzle:
I'm a Scouter (Scout leader). Years ago, I went on a campout with some non-scouting people who like comfort. We arrived at a rustic campsite in the middle of nowhere very late at night, after everything was closed. They had an inflatable QUEEN sized mattress, and NO way to blow it up. That would take all night to inflate it by mouth! (I brought standard Scout gear. It didn't dawn on me that someone might bring something like THAT!)
So... After setting everyone else up, we drove it to the only gas station in the entire area. It was closed, but they still had their air hose outside, and it was active. The friends started to panic. There appeared to be no way to couple them AND trigger the release on the inflation valve. Being far into the woods on a long holiday weekend Friday night, we knew that there was probably no other store open for dozens of miles in any direction to even buy a hand pump.
I simply characterized WHAT we needed as an adapter - Basically, we needed a hollow tube, with a narrowed end. I thought for about a minute.. I then calmly pulled out a cheap click pen from the car's glove compartment, unscrewed the lower section of the pen case, wrapped my hand around the screw end of it and the inflation point to make a crude coupler-seal, and stuck the pen emergent narrowed end hard into the inflation nozzle.
Sure enough. The pen emergent end of the pen case actuated the trigger on the tire valve, and pushing it hard against it caused it to seal somewhat on the valve. My hand worked well enough as a coupler-seal between the pen case and the mattress to inflate the entire mattress to close to full in a couple of minutes.
I calmly reassembled the pen and put it away. We then used breath to top off the mattress, tied the now inflated mattress to the top of the car, and took it back to camp.
Obligatory quote (in spirit of this thread):
When others just stared at my nonchalance at MacGyver-ing a solution with whatever was on hand in under a minute, I just said:
"Hey, I'm an Engineer... This kind of problem doesn't bother us at all..." 
BTW... In your case, I'd just use an old bot's pneumatics. Disconnect the far end of the 1/4" hose from the primary regulator, stick it into the ball's nozzle, and fire up the robot. If they don't couple tight enough, use a few turns of tape (duct, electric, scotch, masking, etc - whatever is handy) wrapped around the hose to make them mate tightly with a jam fit. Now use the robot's primary regulator to limit pressure and adjust your flow rate. When near full, pop the connection, turn off the robot, and finish with breath. (Just don't put a tape contaminated hose end back into a standard push fitting! Clean it with alcohol first, trim the end off, or just use a scrap of hose for this procedure!)
For my teams - I made a few "robot inflation adapters", using a sports ball nozzle kit, a tire inflation nozzle, some couplers from a hardware store (or FIRST KoP), and some 1/4" push fittings. I keep a variety of them in our pneumatics bins. We can now inflate just about anything (from balls to tires) with any robot that has a pneumatics package on it.
Big Hint -
ALWAYS add an air tool quick release male (open tube) fitting to the open end of your robot's vent valve. Ex:
http://www.harborfreight.com/5-piece...set-68237.html
http://www.harborfreight.com/12-piec...kit-68194.html
This allows you to still vent, yet be able to pre-fill a robot's pneumatics in the shop with (FILTERED) shop air to save time (and batteries), AND quickly tap into a robot's on-board compressor at events to do things like inflate tires and balls without having to break an air line connection on your robot. Just make a few pneumatic "quick connect" (M & F) to 1/4" push fitting adapters, and you're in business. You can use spare robot air line at events, to tie them together.
I hope that helps. (Now back to the funny quotes!)
- Keith