Mark Your Balls (tennis, That Is)!

You ever go to the tennis court, and have a hard time telling your balls from somebody else's?  Well, here's my stupid project of the day:  The tennis ball stencil.

The procedure is:  

• using your CNC router, create a spherical stencil that fits on to a ball.
• spray paint each ball

Voila!

Tools needed:

• CNC router, or better yet a 3-d printer.
• a hunk of 3/4" wood
• spray paint
• some balls

In the next step, you'll see how I created the 3-d model.

Step 1: Create Your 3D Model

I used 3/4" wood to create the stencil.  Simply make a 3/4" sheet, and scoop sphere out of it.  Tennis balls are 6.7cm in diameter.  Leave a mm or two of thickness at the bottom so you don't cut through.

Grab the attached inventor file if you don't want to make your own.

I added all design and g-code files to the attached .zip file.  Just download and carve :-)

Step 2: Create the G-Code

Create the g-code from the 3-d model.  I divided carving the sphere into a separate step from carving the smiley face.  That way I can make a few spherical templates, then carve different patterns.

Step 3: Carve!

I carved the sphere, then the smiley.

Step 4: Cut Out the Smiley Face!

Using the attached smiley.ngc, you can carve the smiley face :-)

Step 5: Paint

Now, it's a simple matter of holding the tenns ball onto the stencil while spray painting :-)

Wash rince repeat!