Portable Tennis Ball Machines - Portable Tennis Ball Machine

What is a portable tennis ball machine?
A tennis ball machine is a machine which throws balls at you while you practice sessions. These tennis machines shoot tennis balls at you at various speeds, angles and flights. The machines are ideal for people who donot have a partner to do practice. Also these machines will throw balls as per your practice needs. If you play tennis, you will know that practicing is the best way to improve your game. And a portable tennis ball machine is one of the best ways you can improver your game while not depending on anyone else. You can get on to the court any time you want with this machine and get rolling.

A portable machine is a smaller version of full sized tennis ball machine. These are smaller in size and are most useful for people who need to carry them in your cars. These machines are designed in such a way that they can be easily fitted in the back of a normal sedan.

How does a portable tennis ball machine work?

There is not a great deal of science and technology behind the design of a portable tennis ball machine. The design is pretty simple. How well the machine works depends upon the material and the accuracy with which they are manufactured.

Mostly all machines available in the market utilize the counter rotating wheels method. In this design of the machine, there are 2 wheels which rotate in opposite directions. And these wheels have a small opening between them.

The tennis ball rolls down from above or from the holding area into this space between the two wheels through a tube. The ball gets squeezed between these 2 rotating wheels and then it is thrown out of the machine with great pressure and speed.

The balls can be thrown at different speeds and angles by changing the spin of the rotating wheels. Backspin is accomplished by spinning the lower rotating wheel faster than the top. Likewise if the upper wheel is spinning faster, the ball ejects with topspin.

Features of a portable tennis ball machine

There are a few very basic features of a portable tennis ball machine. These include power, capacity of machine, flight of machine, oscillations provided by the machine, battery life and size of machine etc.

• For a portable tennis ball machine, the size of the machine is the first consideration. It needs to be small for easy carriage.
• Next comes the capacity of the machine. The capacity here means how many balls a machine can accommodate without being refilled. Usually the range is between 30 and 300. It depends how many interruptions are acceptable for the user while practicing. More the capacity, less are the interruptions. On the other side, the size will increase with capacity.
• Power is also a big factor since it will decide the speed and control of the machine. The speed can vary from as little as 10mph to as fast as 100mph.
• Then comes the battery life. Since, this is a portable tennis balls machine; it needs to have a decent battery backup. Not all tennis courts have power plugs to hook up the machine.
• Then there is an all in one control panel where the speed, trajectory, interval control etc can be set and modified.

What is the best portable tennis ball machine?

Which is the best portable tennis ball machine depends on the usage and user of the machine. For a beginner of even an intermediate level player, a basic machine should be enough. But for an expert or advanced level player, he should get an advanced machine where he can precisely control the parameters of the machine like speed, angle, oscillations, interval etc.

There are a number of companies which manufacture good portable tennis ball machines. Some of them are Wilson, Prince and Lobster.