A long way for a small ball.

The task was simple enough: let's develop a ball that behaves on hard surfaces (a.k.a. streets) like a golfball would on grass.

The ball should fly straight, bounce one or two times, roll a little and come to rest. Beautiful.

Sounds simple. So let's get started.

That was 2013 and I had no idea what I hat gotten myself into.

Apparently it's not simple. The problem with hard surfaces is best described as follows:

Round balls like to roll straight, but hardly ever stop.

Solution 1: Make them less round (by shaping off some part of the sphere) and they will eventually stop, but they will NOT be straight.

Solution 2: Put something inside a hollow ball and let the weight/sand/water eventually stop the ball. It's expensive to produce, rather fragile, and wobbles like crazy. Not a fun ball to hit (specially at short distances). And if it rolls very fast, the centrifugal forces kill this effect. So it's not an option.

Solution 3: Cry

So I did what every sane human would do and went back to solution 1.

I just had to make it work. There had to be this fine line where the ball would be just round enough to bounce and roll straight and just freaky enough to come to rest. Even on a slight slope.

There are a lot of ways to shape something off a sphere. And I have probably dreamt of all of them.

I wanted to share some of the ideas with you that made it at least into the model phase.

There have been dozens more, but these are the ones I still have pictures of.

These show the latest phase where I 3D printed many designs and moulded them in a flexible foam.

Some designs did perform well when orienteted correctly. It wasn't perfect but a milestone nonetheless.

Sometimes I really thaught I was on to something. But they were way to bouncy and some just wouldn't stop rolling in some cases. I needed precision. This had to be better.

The very first draft back in 2013. A combination of rubber and ABS. It was a start.