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Tennis balls serve as decent bicycle tires that don’t easily puncture
- rolph 4y agothis caught my eye as similar to a concept from long past readings its not a new concept, e.g https://www.evolutionwheel.com/blog/advantages-of-segmented-solid-skid-steer-tires https://www.evolutionwheel.com/blog/advantages-of-segmented-... this was proposed for consumer automotive, as a tire with a number of wedges/segments with a sealed pneumatic core. you would buy an allotment of these tire segments and replace individual ones in moments as need be. maybe i read about it from a mid-80s issue of Omni. i thought the bicycle would be a good start vs cars n trucks
- karussell 4y agoI think Continental had something similar near production already but cannot find a link. edit: looks like every tyre manufacturer has an "airless" product: https://www.bridgestone.com/technology_innovation/air_free_concept/ https://www.bridgestone.com/technology_innovation/air_free_c... https://corporate.goodyear.com/us/en/responsibility/blog/advanced-mobility-beyond-tires-journey/airless-tire-solution.html https://corporate.goodyear.com/us/en/responsibility/blog/adv... https://www.michelin.com/en/innovation/vision-concept/airless/ https://www.michelin.com/en/innovation/vision-concept/airles...
- rascul 4y agoThe Michelin tire was on HN in 2019, with 131 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20113174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20113174
- throwawaaarrgh 4y agoThis is innovation. Do stupid shit and see if it works.
- spokeonawheel 4y agostop describing my scientific method
- whalesalad 4y agoThis is wicked cool and I want it on my fatbike asap! Might need to attempt and DIY this.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- slg 4y agoIt is interest that from a functional perspective these are just traditional tires with thicker walls to prevent punctures and internally compartmentalized to reduce the impact of a puncture.
- ninkendo 4y agoHow’s the braking performance? Wouldn’t the tennis balls function as a kind of high-friction ball bearing, and allow the outer tire to slip when stopping?
- klyrs 4y agoI'm concerned about the tire slipping off on a corner, too.
- MDWolinski 4y agoYep, that was my thought has well, certainly the in video they didn't show any type of turning with any amount of lean into it where this would have been an issue.
- hanspragt 4y agoThe balls are inserted into PVC rings, which are screwed to the hub, so they can't move. (In my mind this also means that the tire is made of PVC rings and that the balls serve more as decoration, but hey)
- latchkey 4y agoExactly! Surprised I had to read this far down for anyone to realize that little detail. To be fair, the balls kind of spread the covering tire out beyond the rings...
- karussell 4y agoDoesn't the metal ring used to bind the tennis ball lose all the springiness?
- rascul 4y agoLooks like it's plastic. PVC I guess.
- jp57 4y agoEveryone who plays tennis knows that tennis balls don't retain their pressure for very long once outside their pressurized cannister, though. I can't tell if this article is just ignoring that fact or if they are actually running on "flat" balls. (Balls that are too flat to play with still have some pressure and might work fine, I guess, though it seems like riding on them would just flatten them more.)
- hammock 4y agoMaybe they are using practice balls, which don't go flat
- asdff 4y agoMaybe that only matters for playing tennis. These look almost like the design of any other airless tire, only instead of a rubber tire with holes in it they are holding together the tennis balls to form this sort of shape. I think it only matters that they are able to hold their shape up, not that they remain springy or anything.
- acchow 4y ago> I can't tell if this article is just ignoring that fact or if they are actually running on "flat" balls You mean flat ball, right? They have 30 balls in a tire. If one goes flat, then they are running on 29/30 balls.
- ftxbro 4y agohe is saying they all systematically go 'flat' (easily squishable, not firm) after they are out of their pressurized canister for a while. he isn't saying that one will randomly go flat.
- aspyct 4y agoOh, I had no idea! How long does a tennis ball live, typically?
- jp57 4y ago
- carabiner 4y agoInshallah someone will commercialize this and make it with actual tennis balls. I must do this.
- durkie 4y agoNot using tennis balls, but this has been a real product for atv tires for a while: https://www.powersportsid.com/tireballs/ https://www.powersportsid.com/tireballs/
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- eCa 4y agoFor normal world applications, a tubeless[1] setup will perform infinitely better. Though less eye-catchy. [1] https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/buyers-guides/tubeless/ https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/buyers-guides/tubeless/
- pmoriarty 4y ago"Sealant, poured into the tyre or injected through the valve, helps plug any tiny leaks. This sealant stays liquid inside the tyre and will heal small punctures suffered while riding." Isn't that basically the same as Slime, which is (from what I understand) widely reviled in the biking community?
- rascul 4y agoNot sure if they still make them, but some many years ago I tried out some Slime tubes that had the stuff built into the tube somehow. Not only did it not work to seal punctures, it was impossible to patch.
- mbrameld 4y agoNot sure about road biking, but at least in the mountain and gravel communities it's almost universal. There are 3 popular sealant brands that I'm aware of: Stans, Orange Seal, and Slime.
- davidw 4y agoI have been riding and racing bikes since 1990, and I think tubeless is one of the best real innovations. Fixing flats sucks.
- twoWhlsGud 4y agoNo. I've been riding a road tubeless setup in Seattle and surrounding countryside for half a decade now and the feel has nothing to do with Slime. 55mm x ISO 559 lightweight road tires with Orange Seal. (In the NW we like wide road tires : ) Something like 10k miles later I've had zero incidents where I had to fix something on the road. You do have to more maintenance (e.g. make sure you have adequate sealant in the tires periodically) but for regular year round use especially, it is a worthwhile trade.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- skydhash 4y agoIn my country, children use tennis balls (they are cheap) to play some version of football in halls or some enclosed space. The tennis ball is shaved because it will get dirty and wet. It results in an extremely slippery and bouncy ball.
- HopenHeyHi 4y ago[flagged]
- brudgers 4y agoOn the build versus buy axis, Solid bicycle tires are an ordinary product. https://www.google.com/search?q=solid+bicycle+tires&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari https://www.google.com/search?q=solid+bicycle+tires&ie=UTF-8... They predate pneumatic bicycle tires.
- bityard 4y agoOkay, dumb question from someone who rides a bike but is not a "cyclist." Road bikes have a pretty high tire pressure, to the point that the tire itself basically offers no cushion at all, on it's own. Why are these tires pneumatic at all? Why not wrap a rubber donut around the rim and call it a day? I'm sure part of the answer is weight, but surely this can be reduced either by making the rubber relatively thin, or using some sort of hard closed-cell foam underneath the rubber layer?
- recursive 4y agoEven at 100psi, there is significant cushioning behavior from a pneumatic tire for contact patches the size that road tires do.
- spokeonawheel 4y agoextra weight not ok
- currency 4y agoSolid tires crawl around the rim as you ride them. Okay for very low speeds; not okay for cycling speeds.
- glitchc 4y agoBingo! That's the main reason why. Compressibility of the tire turns rolling friction into a translational force. Pneumatic tires also experience a translational force that tries to push the tire back and off the rim as it interacts with the ground.
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- thesausageking 4y agoThey exist and are called "airless tires". Tannus is one of the most popular brands: https://tannusamerica.com/pages/tannus-airless-tires https://tannusamerica.com/pages/tannus-airless-tires They're solid foam and can't go flat. They're not very popular because they don't perform nearly as well as tires with tubes. They have a higher rolling resistance (ie, you have to pedal harder to go the same speed) and have a rougher ride. Good quality tires don't puncture that often and, for most riders, are worth the trade off.
- jacobr 4y agoLooks a bit like tire inserts - basically foam rings you put inside the tire, common on mountain bikes. I just installed that on my bike, which not only protects my rims but also lets me ride home from the trail with a flat tire. https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/buyers-guides/best-tubeless-tyre-inserts/ https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/buyers-guides/best-tubeless...
- cellularmitosis 4y agoThis hack has been known to the dirt bike community for a while now. https://www.google.com/search?q=dirt+bike+tennis+balls&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=dirt+bike+tennis+balls&tbm=i... Also, there's no need to make this so complicated, you can just shove the tennis balls into a normal tire.
- cranky908canuck 4y agoOn a vacation, got thorns in tires a couple of years back, my wife and I grounded until the local bike shop could get around to it. So these tennis tires, vs what's on that bike now, perform - worse now when good - worse than now four weeks out (noted elsewhere, tennis balls decay fast, but - better than now with punctures today. Now, this is a 'clever' way to solve that. The long term solution might be 'thorn-resistant tires' (wish we'd known up front -- but they say 'resistant' not 'proof' for a reason), but if you can live with the performance hit in favour of the failure tolerance ('oops, gotta replace six balls today, not like two yesterday), I can see use cases where that's a go. Yup, should have had a full set of spare tubes. Know that, got spares, but I don't expect three of four tires to go flat on the same day. I guess the takeaway is, tire innovation still has some fruit to pick.
- dingaling 4y agoDuring WW1 several types of military bicycle used springs in a similar manner: https://m.facebook.com/UlsterTransportMuseum/photos/a.461285623904737/3767806916585908/?type=3 https://m.facebook.com/UlsterTransportMuseum/photos/a.461285...
- Fradow 4y agoSeems like a gimmick to me. I've been commuting with reinforced tyres (puncture protection) for 10 years now, and the only punctures I got was when I changed bike and did not upgrade to reinforced tyres straight away. I've not had a single puncture with reinforced tyres (though I get the most reinforced you can get). It's anecdota of course, but I'd love to know if people actually get punctures with that sort of tyres. And this is not by virtue of having clean roads. There are potholes and there is a lot of glass on the cycle lane. Nowadays I don't even bother trying to avoid glass shard and just go straight in. One time I came home with a 0.5cm glass shard stuck in my tyre. It had not punctured the tube. I don't have experience with tubeless designs or solid tyres, but they solve the issue as well.