pic: Yeah!! We finally finished making Orbit Balls!!

[Kims Robot]

loading photo ...

[OScubed]

Many thanks to all the parents, team members, mentors, spouses of mentors, grandparents, and random people who just volunteered off the street to help make all these orbit balls. Here's to an awesome Rally!

Great job all!

Color key:
Black are empty cells
Camo are super cells
Black/Red/White are moon rocks (as are all the store bought ones)

[Gary.C]

Greta job and that probably took a long time. I love the colors, they are sick

[JVN]

If they're anything like the real thing, a lot of them will be broken soon. You might want to make some more.

[skimoose]

Fantastic!

After Scrimmage, please post an update on how well these balls held up to some robot rough-housing.

After all that effort, those Super Cell/Awards are going to be a valuable commodity!

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by JVN

If they're anything like the real thing, a lot of them will be broken soon. You might want to make some more.

Way to kill the vibe, John.

[OScubed]

Ours will probably be more robust than the real ones. The real ones use a cheap plastic connector that is easily broken. These are pop-riveted together for each strip. Not to say they won't break - just that they're pretty tough. We're actually concerned that these will be more robust than the real balls which is why we're not replacing the few real ones we got so that we can use those for our official "testing".

Thanks also to Gus for the help with the video and instructions.

Cheers,

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by OScubed

Ours will probably be more robust than the real ones. The real ones use a cheap plastic connector that is easily broken. These are pop-riveted together for each strip. Not to say they won't break - just that they're pretty tough. We're actually concerned that these will be more robust than the real balls which is why we're not replacing the few real ones we got so that we can use those for our official "testing".

After making our balls, we wanted to do some testing with broken bands. It took many throws as hard as people could into a concrete floor to get both pop rivets to come out. The Lexan never broke. The same type of throwing quickly broke a real ball. In retrospect, it would have been easier to drill out the rivets, but throwing them was more fun.

[David Brinza]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

After making our balls, we wanted to do some testing with broken bands. It took many throws as hard as people could into a concrete floor to get both pop rivets to come out. The Lexan never broke. The same type of throwing quickly broke a real ball. In retrospect, it would have been easier to drill out the rivets, but throwing them was more fun.

We did similar testing of our adhesive-bonded practice balls - no failures at all.

We also used hot glue to join the fabric ends. It's faster and easier than sewing and also is quite robust (no separated seams after an impromptu soccer game).

[Robert103]

We found that balls pop riveted/glued together acted differently than the store bought balls, do the balls you made still flex like they do?

[Josh Goodman]

Originally Posted by Robert103

We found that balls pop riveted/glued together acted differently than the store bought balls, do the balls you made still flex like they do?

Slightly different. Yes, we thought of this too. They are a little stiffer than the store-bought kind but they flex enough so that there won't be any problems.

[Lara Surmak]

What did you make the balls out of?
We tried using lexan that was the same thickness as the plastic that the original moon rock was made from, but the ball that was made is unsquishable, and therefore useless to our team.

[kevin.li.rit]

Originally Posted by Lara Surmak

What did you make the balls out of?
We tried using lexan that was the same thickness as the plastic that the original moon rock was made from, but the ball that was made is unsquishable, and therefore useless to our team.

They used polycarbonate(lexan). I'm not sure of the thickness.

[Cynette]

Our balls were substantially stiffer than the factory manufactured ones, but were still usable by most teams for testing and practice. One suggestion to make them more flexible is to use tape to connect the ends rather than the rivets.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Cynette

Our balls were substantially stiffer than the factory manufactured ones, but were still usable by most teams for testing and practice. One suggestion to make them more flexible is to use tape to connect the ends rather than the rivets.

I wish I had known about this back when we wrote the white paper, but the material inside a real Orbit Ball is polypropylene. McMaster sells 4'x8' sheets of 1/16" thick polypropylene for $29.16 and 3/32" thick sheets for $41.20.