pic: Homemade Orbit Ball! (White Paper Coming Soon)

[daltore]

FIRST is selling the game pieces for $10 a piece. You have to fill out this application process to get them.

How much does the replication ball weigh in comparison to the actual one? I see this difference being very crucial in calculations. Our team managed to find 17 balls (the afternoon of Kick-off and Sunday), so I'll try to get a chance to find the range of deviation and the distribution of deviation of the ball's weight to see if it will affect results.

If Blip has discontinued this product, how would they make money off of the design anymore? Simply by filing suits against students of a non-profit? I think it's pretty obvious they would lose, and so they'd have to foot the cost of a lawyer and actually lose money, so I'm pretty sure we'll be okay.

[FoleyEngineer]

Team910 - The Foley Freeze tried our hand at making a ball today too. It came out pretty nice! We measured the strips in the KOP ball at 1 1/8 wide BTW, and created a duplicate by cutting strips and riviting them together (two at each overlapping joint). Here's a picture of the new ball (clear plastic) next to the KOP one, and then it wrapped in shiny duct tape - for fun!

[artdutra04]

Word on the streets is that there may be an announcement about the Orbit Ball availability in sometime later today (Tuesday).

Because of that, we're currently holding off on releasing the white paper and video until then.

However, as it stands we still are looking to release this white paper. Even if a reliable source for these balls is made available, our polycarbonate replicate ones are much more durable (while having nearly identical characteristics), which is very important for human player practicing. Because while FIRST events may have hundreds of spare ones, with the economy the way it currently is, nearly all team budgets won't allow for this, ;-)

Originally Posted by FoleyEngineer

Team910 - The Foley Freeze tried our hand at making a ball today too. It came out pretty nice! We measured the strips in the KOP ball at 1 1/8 wide BTW, and created a duplicate by cutting strips and riviting them together (two at each overlapping joint). Here's a picture of the new ball (clear plastic) next to the KOP one, and then it wrapped in shiny duct tape - for fun!

It looks good. The dual 1/8" pop rivets is the exact same method we used on ours, and so far holds really well.

[Thermal]

This game piece fiasco is absurd. Our team is very strapped on money this year and we cannot justify spending 100 dollars for enough gameballs to adequately test our manipulator. At the very least we should of been supplied 5 balls in the KOP.

If the game uses 128 balls on a field at a time, FIRST should ship more than 1 game ball to a team. I mean we all got one trackball which is MONSTROUS and ROBUST compared to this shoddily constructed item. We need around 10 balls to accurately test any manipulator we use but why should we have to pay 100 dollars plus shipping for that privaledge? Not only that but have to jump through hoops and apply on the website to even get a chance to give FIRST our money for balls we should of been supplied with anyways. I think i've pretty adequately described my extreme distaste over this issue so i'll stop ranting now.

[Cynette]

Originally Posted by Thermal

This game piece fiasco is absurd. Our team is very strapped on money this year and we cannot justify spending 100 dollars for enough gameballs to adequately test our manipulator.

I'm optimistic that once the initial flurry to obtain game pieces subsides that the spirit of "coopertition (cooperation and competition combined) will prevail. I hope that areas where there are multiple teams will generate inventory lists so that teams with few balls will be able to access a sufficient number of balls for robot testing. Of course that doesn't help the remotely located teams or teams not in the US.

I know our team is concerned since we host a pre-ship rally and spending money to buy a full competition quantity of balls is out of the question. If we can make the balls cheaper, we may start production soon to at least generate enough to give teams a good simulation at Rochesters Rally.

Ah, let me do the math: Four Volunteers making One ball a night x 40 nights until rally = 160 balls! Now if I could find four volunteers willing to give up their evenings for the next 40 days, and who aren't already working on building a robot, all would be well. Hello out there! Any takers?

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Cynette

Ah, let me do the math: Four Volunteers making One ball a night x 40 nights until rally = 160 balls! Now if I could find four volunteers willing to give up their evenings for the next 40 days, and who aren't already working on building a robot, all would be well. Hello out there! Any takers?

If you are making only one ball at a time, the process takes a few hours. But if you make a mini production line, the process goes much quicker. ;-)

Until another McMaster order comes in, we only have enough polycarbonate to make one (maybe two) more homemade moon rock ball(s) at the moment. I'm bringing our video camera to tonight's meeting to film the process. And since the official Orbit ball availability doesn't look to be improving much in its situation, we'll be working to get this white paper and video out to all teams ASAP.

[IKE]

We made 15-20 of the plastic only (like the 910 ball) balls tonight in 3 hours (me, another mentor, and about 4 kids). We are going to use those for human player training as they are more durabble than the toy and nearly identical size, weight,......

One thing we did a little different was 1 rivet, and then bonded the end of strips with special Polycarbonate glue.

Overall this I feel will be a very worthwhile exercise at least as practice balls for human players.

Thansk for posting the dimensions guys!

(p.s. if you have a sheer with a stop, you can make these much faster).

[Darkcrosbone]

Thank you Samir13k i followed your instructions on how to make a mini orbit ball and this is what i got
http://s202.photobucket.com/albums/a...t=PICT3530.jpg
http://s202.photobucket.com/albums/a...t=PICT3534.jpg
when you did it was it with thick paper? because i used normal paper and i had to use alot of tape on the joints to keep it together and it took a long time to peal it off.

[artdutra04]

As promised, here the white paper!

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2187

or alternate location (with downloadable how-to video for schools with YouTube/Vimeo blocking):

http://www.team228.org/media/documents/view/29

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

As promised, here the white paper!

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2187

or alternate location (with downloadable how-to video for schools with YouTube/Vimeo blocking):

http://www.team228.org/media/documents/view/29

Thanks very much Art!

btw, why are we both still awake? lol

[Doug Leppard]

Art thanks for the "Gus" balls, this will be very helpful.

[artdutra04]

Also, if there are any teams in the general Connecticut area that would like to see one of our "Gus balls" in person, Team 228 will be hosting our annual Kickoff pasta dinner fundraiser event this Sunday, January 11th at Maloney High School, 121 Gravel St, Meriden, CT 06450 from 4pm until 7pm.

[Graham Donaldson]

Thanks Art! This is very useful to those of us who only got one extra orbit ball...goes to make some Gus balls.

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

Also, if there are any teams in the general Connecticut area that would like to see one of our "Gus balls" in person, Team 228 will be hosting our annual Kickoff pasta dinner fundraiser event this Sunday, January 11th at Maloney High School, 121 Gravel St, Meriden, CT 06450 from 4pm until 7pm.

Will you and/or the team be playing with some on the mountain Saturday as well?? You should def wear one of those as a hat or something for a "costume" during that event.