Team update 04 - Cargo is inflated to 3½ psi. ±½ psi. (checked every morning and lunch break and as outliers are suspected using this gauge at official events).
We just received the gauge used at official events and it is defective. The front face blows off at about 2 psi and all the air leaks out. The link above now says they are out of stock. Hopefully they’ll figure out a better solution for competitions.
Is anyone else having better luck with their Champion Sports pressure gauge?
In a great shock to everybody, this exactly the same behavior as 2/3 of the gauges I’ve bought from Harbor Freight.
Same here. Also, over inflating so that it came out to 3.5, then checking with our digital pump was about a psi or so off… not sure what gauge to trust. Maybe should bring back the diameter check of 2019 using a ring and inflating until the balls are a slip fit. (Same method used in competitive spikeball)
Balls made with elastic material can be checked for inflation that way…but these balls are not very elastic, they don’t change size noticeably with changed inflation pressure.
The Lifetime gauge I bought at Big 5 seems to work ok.
I bought this off-brand ball pressure gauge on Amazon for my team. It’s worked just fine.
I’m happy to say that I got a full refund from the supplier, Epic Sports.
We have two of the champion gauges and both seem to be odd. We have a similar experience where the only way to get a good reading is to over inflate and then use the gauge to release air, if we put the gauge in a ball we believe is inflated correctly it will not register a reading and we have to over inflate and release air again. Similarly to above our digital gauges seem to read about 1 psi higher than this analog gauge (analog reads 3.5psi is a digital 4.5psi).
I hope HQ puts out a video or instructions of some kind for the exact procedure to inflate the balls and check their pressure using these gauges.
Does it help get the readings to start by pressing heavily on the ball, to artificially increase the inside pressure?
That was a good idea but it didn’t seem to help from initial testing. I filmed a short video of what we are experiencing, if anyone has advice for making these gauges more consistent we’d love to know.
About 5 mins of me inflating the cargo with the digital inflator and shop air and reading the various gauges.
Our Amazon digital pump consistently reads 1psi higher than the Champion gauge on the same ball.
My current inflation technique that seems at least repeatable with the Champion gauge is to over inflate with the Amazon pump by 2-2.5psi (set it to 5.0psi). Then I rapidly tap the bleed valve on the Champion gauge to puff out small exhausts until I hit 3.5 on the money. The jostling of the needle and exercising of the valves I think helps get the gauge unstuck.
Fwiw I do think that is how the Champion gauge is intended to be used. Meaning it’s designed to take a slightly overinflated ball down to proper pressure and probably expected to be used that way.
This is also what I found worked well. (Using the Champion gauge, and I have the same wireless pump that Allen linked in their open build thread).
The real question is will the volunteers filling the balls and checking them with this gauge know to do it this way…
I’ll see if they can get video tomorrow, but my kids said they filled cargo up to 5 psi and our “FRC Official” gauge was still reading 0 psi
I don’t think it matters much for cargo size (my original concern). I just inflated cargo to 3 psi and 6 psi and the circumference only changed by less than 0.5 inch. For my sample size of 2 the size change is insignificant, I didn’t attempt to measure bounciness.
Unconstrained size is not the only concern though. Most mechanisms that handle these balls have some amount of compression or squeeze built in. Even if two cargo are the same OD to start, if one needs an inch of compression to get good traction and will happily accept three inches, and the other requires so much force to get that inch of compression that the mechanism can’t squeeze it through, then handling these balls just becomes that much harder. The issue is that the actual specification, 3½ ± ½ psi, seems to be different to the results of using the specified procedure, i.e. using the linked gauge.
I don’t think this issue is going to go away anytime soon.
Accurate pressure gauges at this low of a gauge pressure are not something that is commonly available outside of a laboratory. (= expensive)
Catapults > wheeled shooters?
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