Cheap Ball Auto-Feeding Machine

This is a automatic ball feeding machine which can be used beside a ball throwing machine (which is used in many sports like tennis, cricket, etc). The problem with a ball throwing machine or balling machine is that most of them requires a person to put the ball into the machine in preferred interval of time which is very boring. So, balling machine without auto feeding machine is quite useless, you cannot place solo if you want to. While auto feeding machine is the market are quite expensive so, I have decided to create a cheap and flexible ball feeding machine which can be placed beside any ball throwing machine.

You need a low rpm DC motor, I have high torque 30 rpm motor, a motor speed controller, a 120 x 9D cm PVC pipe of storing the ball (may vary based on size of the feeding balls). You need a small piece of plywood around 24 x 24 cm for creating obstruction for the ball. The steel materials like 1 x 1 in cubic pipe, 1 inch tube, 2 inch tube and some thick straps are needed to create a tripod stand to place whole arrangement of auto-feeder. If you have a tripod stand or similar sorts of arrangement to hold the assembly then you can skip the steps of creating a tripod stand.

This tripod is fabricated using Stainless steel material, All the measurements are given in the figure. You can also use any sort of heavy duty tripod stand if you have it, then you have to just think about how to place upper assembly containing PVC pipe, motor, Plywood disc and speed controller. This tripod is created just to make whole machine flexible for any sorts of balling machine but if you have only niche use of this machine on your own balling machine than you can also create a simpler stand instead such tripod stand.

This is a approx. 50 inch long stand so it could hold that much long PVC pipe. That PVC pipe can hold approx. 12 standard tennis balls. Clamps are created on both of the ends to hold the PVC pipe. On one end of this stand there's an adjustable holder created to hold DC motor. This stand get fit on the tripod top.

At first create a circular Disc which is large enough to cover the opening of the PVC pipe. Then create a groove as shown in Figure such that a ball can easily pass through it. Create a slope on the edge of the groove such that the ball slide easily instead of being stuck. Then at the center of the Disc, create such arrangement which can be used to clamp the that plywood disc on the shaft of the DC motor.

Here is the connection diagram of the machine. The speed controller is used to increase or decrease the time interval between 2 consecutive balls by varying speed of the motor.

After assembling whole machine will look like this. Now here, you can adjust the speed and slope accordingly to vary the time gap between 2 consecutive balls. The opening of this auto feeder could be placed at the inlet of the balling machine soo that ball coming out of this machine get fed into the ball throwing machine in a timely manner.