Hi, did anyone see some shuttlecock serve machines? I saw the machines which are used to serve in tennis and pingpong, but never see the familar machine on the badminton court. If there's no such a machine for now, why there's no manufacturer make it? I think a good serve machine might be very useful to provide a tough training for a single person. Also, if it's computer-controlled, the training should be perfect if the coach is in holiday! Does anyone have any idea about this casual question?
Im just trying to think how this would actaully work lol, i mean its easy for launching tennis balls since they only require two rollers to be spinning at high speed and balls drop in. But a shuttle is such an odd shape.. my initial ideas were launching them from a tube with some kind of gas powered valve. Or simply have a mech arm constantly swinging with a shuttle feeder lol.
i think it would definitely have to be an arm being swung mechanically - using gas power wuold be complicated because of the structure / nature of shuttles... also if you use and arm and a racquet it would be a better simulation, and you wouldnt have to worry too much about how damaged the shuttles are.. one problem - i don't think mechanical arms are at a standard where the necessary racquet head speed can be generated... Coops
Its so complicated to make a shuttle launching system, thats probably why no companies actaulyl attempted it. I mean how much would they sell it for? No ones going to pay alot for it.
Hang a tube which contains shuttlecocks, use a switch on it's bottom to drop the shuttlecocks. Then trigger a power motor to swing the racket to hit it. I guess the whole system must be controlled by computer to keep high accuracy. Does it work?
launching machine They already exist...how do you think companies test the shuttles they've made? Unfortunately they're too big/expensive for the kind of use you're thinking of.
Oh...The machine doesn't look elegant...there's no swinging racket as I imagined. Hi Pete, sorry for raise this repeated question. It just suddenly appeared in my mind when I saw my coach had been doing multi feed too much.
Here's one in action... nice to see how birdies get made 2... http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2315764448542474836&q=badminton
Having a racquet swing at the shuttle in fact would be the "not elegant" design. There's no need for such complexity because controlling the timing and angular velocity would take a lot of sensors and embedded software. Using compress air or a hydralic ram would be much more elegant from an engineering standpoint.