How Tennis Balls Are Made
December 17, 2016 7:23 AM   Subscribe

A short video , without music or voiceover, showing how tennis balls are manufactured.
posted by Fig (50 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wow....for all the mechanization, those things require a lot more "touching" than I'd expected.
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:34 AM on December 17, 2016 [12 favorites]


The lady whose job it is to align the balls just right for the logo printing process has an expression on her face which speaks to me of the depths of human boredom. A good job, nonetheless, as long as it can't quite be automated.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:53 AM on December 17, 2016 [19 favorites]


I was surprised to see no method of pressurization. Aren't the can's pressurized? Is the bounciness actually due to the stiffness of the rubber, and the pressure a red herring?
posted by explosion at 8:09 AM on December 17, 2016 [3 favorites]


The lady whose job it is to align the balls just right for the logo printing process

Oh my God, that poor woman! The fact that so much of it can be automated, leaving just this tiny task in need of human intervention, that takes just a couple of seconds, and so has to be repeated so many times, so quickly, requiring so little thought. Suddenly I love my job...
posted by penguin pie at 8:09 AM on December 17, 2016 [5 favorites]


The first part looks a lot like baking.
posted by schmod at 8:15 AM on December 17, 2016 [3 favorites]


Suddenly I love my job...
ROBOT : What is my purpose?

RICK : You pass butter

ROBOT : Oh my god.

RICK : Yeah, welcome to the club, pal.

posted by mikelieman at 8:17 AM on December 17, 2016 [16 favorites]


How Tennis Balls Are Destroyed
posted by radwolf76 at 8:20 AM on December 17, 2016 [10 favorites]


That looks fun and exciting!
posted by beerperson at 8:25 AM on December 17, 2016


I've seen that same look while doing a safety audit at a factory that finishes ceiling tiles, in two positions: One person's job is to use a razor blade at the end of a stick to cut the tiles apart after lamination. Another person inspects the tiles, an endless stream of white whizzing by. It concerned me enough to ask about it, and what they do is rotate jobs every half hour with ones that are a little more mentally stimulating. The operators seemed to be OK with it. Hopefully they do something like that here, but who knows.
posted by Fig at 8:27 AM on December 17, 2016 [7 favorites]


Fascinating, and reminds us that the current debate over automation of manufacturing and service jobs is really just about the last mile of a process that's been going on a long damn time.
posted by spitbull at 8:27 AM on December 17, 2016 [5 favorites]


I was also surprised at the amount of hand work, and at a couple of the machines that seemed less efficient than I would have guessed (like the machine cutting the oval skin shapes out one by one). There may just not be any gains to speeding up those items if the bottleneck is somewhere else.

I also could almost smell the fumes from the glue operations -- the air in that place must be nicely toxic.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:52 AM on December 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


I was struck by the machine cutting the oval swatches of felt too. Seemed really slow and then it occurred to me that maybe it is only as fast as it needs to be to match rate with the rest of the process.

I wondered what happens to all that surplus felt left after the ovals are punched, is it recovered and reconstituted? Likewise all the surplus rubber, but it's more obvious how that could get done in house.
posted by spitbull at 9:09 AM on December 17, 2016 [3 favorites]


Then it occurred to me that if tennis balls were square there would be much less waste.
posted by spitbull at 9:10 AM on December 17, 2016 [25 favorites]


I was surprised to see no method of pressurization. Aren't the can's pressurized? Is the bounciness actually due to the stiffness of the rubber, and the pressure a red herring?

Tennis balls aren't pressurized. I know this because I've had friends with walkers who have put cut-open tennis balls on the bottoms of the legs and I've cut open tennis balls for this purpose, and there is no pressure inside them pushing out like in a car tire. The bounciness is a combination of the springy nature of the rubber plus the air trapped inside which is not above atmospheric pressure.

The cans aren't pressurized, I don't think. They are sealed because rubber degrades over time in contact with air, so the cans are sealed to keep the air that contacts the balls minimized and thus the balls as fresh as they can be.

I don't play tennis, and I could be full of shit about that. But I do know, when I've poked a knife into a tennis ball, there is no outward rush of air coming from the hole.
posted by hippybear at 9:14 AM on December 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


Is there a narrated version of this video somewhere? I'd like to know what all the stuff is, where it came from, etc.
posted by MikeWarot at 9:16 AM on December 17, 2016


How do they deal with differing air pressure once the balls have left the factory? Is the rubber permeable enough that the air pressure inside equalizes?
posted by not_the_water at 9:29 AM on December 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


According to this*, new ones are somewhat pressurised**, but it leaks over time. You can restore them to ideal condition by putting them under higher pressure so air leaks back in.

Ones you cut up were probably already down to normal air pressure.

*A tennis ball pressuriser manufacturer's site, but still.
**No idea how. Maybe being packed under pressure does the job?
posted by Segundus at 9:34 AM on December 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yes, the rubber is permeable. Used to sometimes play racquetball, and had one of these things.

There was a substantial difference in ball life from using it.
posted by booooooze at 9:35 AM on December 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think it's great that we go to this much effort for dogs
posted by thelonius at 9:55 AM on December 17, 2016 [29 favorites]


I wondered what happens to all that surplus felt left after the ovals are punched, is it recovered and reconstituted?

idk but it would be a lot more efficient to just let my dog eat scrap felt rather than make him go to all the work of pulling it off the balls bit by bit with his teeth.
posted by phunniemee at 9:55 AM on December 17, 2016 [11 favorites]


Compare: 1961
posted by Sys Rq at 9:56 AM on December 17, 2016 [23 favorites]


Compare: 1961

I had completely forgotten about the existence of white tennis balls.

How do I get some yardage of that felt? There is a jacket I'd like to have made.
posted by rhizome at 10:13 AM on December 17, 2016


It seems like it would be more efficient to print the logos on the flat pieces of felt than to have to position each ball individually.
posted by bendy at 10:16 AM on December 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


Compare: 1961

Here is how tennis balls are made. In conclusion, women, amirite?
posted by tigrrrlily at 10:21 AM on December 17, 2016 [3 favorites]


Compare: 1961
The pellets they put inside the balls to pressurize them was unexpected. I wonder when they stopped doing that?
posted by Thorzdad at 10:31 AM on December 17, 2016


I love seeing industrial processes like this, and it's nice to hear the machinery instead of whatever music, but these shots are way too short. I want to see these things for more than half a second! I know you have that footage, quit bogarting it
posted by tiaz at 10:32 AM on December 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


Tennis balls are definitely pressurized, the golden goal for decades now has been to create a ball that responds like a standard ball despite being unpressurized, according to my coach who has tried these balls there is still a good ways to go yet.
posted by Cosine at 10:53 AM on December 17, 2016


Also why oh why is he using scissors!?
posted by Cosine at 10:53 AM on December 17, 2016


How do I get some yardage of that felt?

Call up The Felt Store of course

In conclusion, women, amirite?

Not until the second half of the video.
posted by IndigoJones at 11:00 AM on December 17, 2016


Sadly no

I did find some sources on Alibaba, but I'd have to get 500yd.
posted by rhizome at 11:10 AM on December 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'd have to get 500yd.

You could give some to phunniemee's dog...
posted by hippybear at 11:14 AM on December 17, 2016 [5 favorites]


A nice dig at lying scientists, too
posted by thelonius at 11:19 AM on December 17, 2016


It seems like it would be more efficient to print the logos on the flat pieces of felt than to have to position each ball individually.

Except for the whole "let's stack them all up and dip the whole stack in glue" thing, sure. They don't show the glue dip in the '61 video, but they do show the glued stack of felt pieces being peeled apart. It doesn't seem very logo-friendly.

That said, they could definitely automate the ball rotation. That is, the robotic technology absolutely exists; whether it would be cost-effective to replace one barely-paid worker with a jillion-dollar robot to do the same thing is another issue entirely.

Also why oh why is he using scissors!?

That one is a bit baffling. They could just weld a blade or separator in the press, right? But the scissors are probably a very welcome breakup of the monotonous peeling and stacking process.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:37 AM on December 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


whether it would be cost-effective to replace one barely-paid worker with a jillion-dollar robot to do the same thing is another issue entirely.

I got the impression from watching that it's probably TWO workers, one of them doing the two balls closest to the camera and the one we see doing the two balls farther from the camera.

And yeah, the robotic technology exists. It's only a matter of time before that technology gets cheap enough to justify installing it.
posted by hippybear at 11:41 AM on December 17, 2016


Similar, with narration
posted by matrixclown at 11:41 AM on December 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


The scissors seemed strange to me, too.

But it also only exists as a step because the one machine produces larger sheets than the next machine takes in. Maybe they're already planning to replace the next machine with one that takes the full-sized sheets so they only bothered with a temporary solution?
posted by RobotHero at 11:43 AM on December 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


It needs a soundtrack if it wants to have a chance against the the famous Sesame Street crayon video.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 11:56 AM on December 17, 2016 [4 favorites]


I like the part where they look like tasty chocolates.
posted by AFABulous at 3:11 PM on December 17, 2016


Maybe they're already planning to replace the next machine with one that takes the full-sized sheets so they only bothered with a temporary solution?

Great. Now the robots are taking each other's jobs as well.
posted by tobascodagama at 3:28 PM on December 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


same link at yt (vimeo never works right for me).
posted by andrewcooke at 4:28 PM on December 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ahhhh, factory monotony. Having a job like the logo-turning woman when I was a tween really informed my expectations of work as an adult. There's a point where boredom and repetition is just so profound your hands can basically work without you, and I don't know about other people, but for me my brain goes into a dim-awareness mode which takes a while to come out once the shift's over, and before that words and concepts are just unrelated to what I'm doing. It can work up to some ridiculous levels of efficiency (and corresponding joint damage).

It's the sort of experience that really plays into my thinking when I hear people going on about factory jobs and how they're all going to China or wherever and they should come back and employ people. Like, okay, these people are probably picturing fun presses and heavy machinery and whatnot, but it's much more likely that the jobs are the job of ball-turning or the sheet cutting, or the felt pressing, for days and days and days no matter how often the boss rotates the jobs, it'll still be days and days and days in the end, repeatedly, forever.
posted by E. Whitehall at 5:49 PM on December 17, 2016 [7 favorites]


Told my boyfriend that this was a Hot Pocket production and had him for ~:45 seconds there...
posted by Brickberry at 9:07 PM on December 17, 2016 [8 favorites]


The lady whose job it is to align the balls just right for the logo printing process

Oh my God, that poor woman! The fact that so much of it can be automated, leaving just this tiny task in need of human intervention, that takes just a couple of seconds, and so has to be repeated so many times, so quickly, requiring so little thought. Suddenly I love my job...


It's not really that bad, as far as factory jobs go. Sitting down, good ergonomics. It's not easy to automate fine work like that, though it is possible. A place I worked at had everyone spend 2 weeks on the assembly line to get a feel for what it's like no matter whether you were hired for a job in the marketing HQ skyscraper or were an IT developer. Manufacturing is about designing robust processes that eliminate the possibility of human failure, so it was perfectly ok to throw people into random lineside jobs for a bit to see how manufacturing and quality processes worked. One stint I did a long time ago was working on the underneath of vehicles, snapping in fuel lines and wiring harnesses, so I spent my entire day standing and looking straight up vertically. That factory no longer exists, and more modern ones have better (costlier) ergonomics: I guess leadership is more likely to approve ergonomics upgrades when they know first hand how much it sucks.
posted by xdvesper at 11:32 PM on December 17, 2016 [5 favorites]


Also, most of the concern about the loss of factory jobs is not about factory work being so incredibly fulfilling, it's that the lost factory jobs aren't getting replaced with anything. (At least, not by anything in the same geographical area.) Most people would quite reasonably take a boring job over no job.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:14 AM on December 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


The weirdest thing about being on an assembly line is when it stops. For a few seconds it seems to be going backward.
posted by MtDewd at 8:21 AM on December 18, 2016 [4 favorites]


It's not really that bad, as far as factory jobs go. Sitting down, good ergonomics. It's not easy to automate fine work like that, though it is possible.

Yeah, this didn't look too horrible to me given regular job rotation. Boring jobs are much, much better than bad jobs, and there is a difference even if there's a lot of overlap.

If I were working at the ball-turning-for-logo-print station I'd be glad that the line went by twice and I only had to turn the two rows of balls closest to me. One for each hand, can alternate which hand does which row to stave off the RSI a bit longer. Now, the press where all the bits of rubber had to be placed just so into the enormous Whack-a-Mole grid, that looked more difficult. More reaching, less predictable, harder to keep pace.

Wish they'd shown the final packaging operation, but that's probably not as interesting (putting things in boxes is pretty similar across industries) except for the canisters.
posted by asperity at 4:17 PM on December 18, 2016


I had completely forgotten about the existence of white tennis balls.
The biggest flashback I ever had was while watching the original BBC Life on Mars, and Sam kicks at something on the ground and says "White dogshit! That takes me back..." and I immediately went "Oh man I know!!" I hadn't even remembered it used to be A Thing before they regulated the bone content of dog food.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:53 AM on December 19, 2016 [6 favorites]


Wait, that's why I never see white dog shit anymore? (And that's what caused it?) Wow. That was not something I expected to learn today.
posted by asperity at 8:52 AM on December 19, 2016 [5 favorites]


Baseballs! @ ~5:25
posted by 0rison at 7:20 PM on December 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


White dog shit deserves an fpp.
posted by bonobothegreat at 10:18 PM on December 19, 2016 [4 favorites]


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