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Unread 03-01-2009, 23:17
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Chris Marra Chris Marra is offline
The Blue Alliance Staff / 177 Alum
no team (TBA / Bobcat Robotics)
Team Role: College Student
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Rookie Year: 2005
Location: South Windsor, CT
Posts: 309
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Re: Source for Orbit Ball

Quote:
Originally Posted by artdutra04 View Post
To anyone who has already broken one of these: can you find out what plastic material they are made of? I'm looking for an exact answer (such as acetal, PET, etc), not just something like "Its plastic, duh".

The reason I ask, is that after finding only four of them between two local Wal-Marts, the engineering and New England frugality instincts inside of me rang out. The orbit balls don't look very hard to [re]produce!

Using calipers, the interior plastic material is about 1" wide by about 0.1" thick (cannot tell for sure due to felt thickness), and the material they are coated with seems to be identical to the material used on stretchable Book Socks. The plastic (depending on the actual material) should be easily source-able through McMaster, and book socks aren't that difficult to find.

If someone can get me an [exact] answer within the next few days, I'll immediately place an order into McMaster to make about twenty or thirty of these balls, and then I'll raid the school supply sections of every store in the area like a loaded refrigerator.
I wouldn't bother with buying up book covers for this purpose. Admittedly, I handled the orbit balls very litte despite taking dozens of photos of them, but I believe the outer skin was basically a spandex material, as are those book covers. It would be much more efficient to just purchase a few yards of fabric from your local Joanne's, or, McMaster might even stock sheets of spandex.
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