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Originally Posted by Ziaholic
No comment on the legality of it ... but technically it'd be a challenge to convince me that it's worth the effort. We tossed that idea around for a little while during our brainstorming sessions, but it died off somewhat quickly.
For ball handling, with it's somewhat porous cover, the volume of air that you'd have to move would be huuuuge ... and the area of the suction cup would have to be pretty large. I don't think that a tank behind a solenoid would do the trick. I'd wager that you'd have to be constantly sucking large volumes of air to maintain a partial vacuum at the cup
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Worth the effort? Challenge?
OK, some basic physics here. The ball is 40 inches in diameter. it is a sphere. So, you contact that sphere with a large circular hole (a box with a hole maybe?) behind which you have a vacuum source. Yes there will be leakage, so a centrifugal fan is in order (maybe a vacuum cleaner with the AC motor replaced with KOP motors?) If your circle is, say around 20" in diameter, that will give you an area of more than 300 square inches. With a delta P of 1 PSI, (Delta P is the difference in pressure, so 1 PSI of vacuum) that will give you 300 LB.s of holding force. Even a modest shop vac can create almost 2 PSI of vacuum, and a huge flow rate (relatively speaking) so any leakage around the rim is not even noticeable.
Not only is it doable, and worth the effort, look for it at a regional near you!!!
