How To????????

[Dr.Brain]

OK...these days I play TT (table tennis) and by mistake I "chibbed" my table tennis ball by mistakedly putting my foot over it..Its a normal white coloured light ball.... and a part of the sphere has went into it..(know what i mean?)

Now ... Can anyone please tell me how am i gonna fix it? ...I have bought some new balls...but just as a physic psycho, I want to fix it... Probably it is too hard for me to blow air and to re-inflate it... any methods?

[JamesU]

Stick a needle inside and push the dent out

[brewnog]

Submerge it in boiling water for a few moments.

[Dr.Brain]

I think what we want is some knid of pressure from inside..remember its relatively strong plastic.... boiling will either do nothing..or probably expand it...without doing anything to the dent..

[brewnog]

Nope, I've been there and done it. I had a thumb-print sized dent. Holding it under boiling water for a few minutes just popped the dent back out again. Trust me, I'm an engineer...

[cronxeh]

put it in vacuum

Edit: the inside air pressure should have max air pressure points on the dent and evenly distributed on the curved sides, so the dent will be pushed out until its uniform with the rest of the ball, and then the ball will crack depending on the young's modulus for that material

yes, you should just dip it into boiling water - cheaper :rofl:

[PerennialII]

Brewies thing works well .... an 'industrial version' of it is applied for example in welding and when repairing dented/buckled plates etc. (well, pretty much the same idea, the same principle the very least).

[minger]

As someone who plays beerpong quite frequently, boiling does in fact work wonders. For small dents, you can even sometimes hold a lighter up to it (not too close or it will "blister"). However, you would be quite surprised how large dents can be fixed with boiling.