Slinger - The Most Portable Tennis Ball Launcher

Slinger @ ISPO
over 5 years ago – Wed, Feb 06, 2019 at 01:36:50 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Our Commitment
over 5 years ago – Fri, Feb 01, 2019 at 02:01:57 AM

Slingers,

Many of you have been reaching out over the past 24 hours and we have read and appreciate all of your feedback. Rather than responding to each one of you, we felt that addressing the group as a whole would be ideal.

We hear some of your comments about the reduced speed and the overall look of the bag, however we don't feel the video posted properly portrays Slinger’s capabilities as far as speed, topspin, etc... 

As someone who has tested Slinger on the court countless times, we believe that the speed coupled with the spin of the ball, truly does provide the challenge you are all looking for in a partner (ie. ball launcher). We have had multiple mid and high level players play with it, and not one felt that higher speeds would be practical for the majority of players, and definitely not worth the trade off with the extra weight it would add. 

We will be presenting at ISPO in Munich this coming week, and encourage anyone who can, to come hit with Slinger. In addition we will be posting new unedited video footage next week, which we believe will give a much clearer picture of Slinger in action.

We believe in Slinger so strongly, that we are prepared to offer each of you a full refund, if you don’t like the end product.

To our limited knowledge, we have not seen any campaign that has made a promise like this before, but we believe in Slinger that much. 

The version of Slinger which you all saw in the pictures and videos yesterday, was still a prototype, albeit the final prototype. Once those first units come off the production line, we will do a full review, not ourselves, but with backers, or other tennis players who are unaffiliated with our company. Further to this, we will provide full specs, videos, speed testing, etc… and if the final produced unit is not desirable to you, you will have the option to receive a full refund. Simple as that. 

Further to this point, we will also add that once our factories reopen and we have a realistic delivery date, which we will share in the coming weeks (once the factories reopen after the chinese new year holidays), if we miss that delivery date, you will also all be entitled to ask for a refund, and will not be denied. 

We are putting this here in writing so that we can be held accountable to this.

We are not here to take anybody’s money or force them to have a product that they do not want.  As tennis players ourselves, we simply set out to innovate a pain point that we saw in existing ball launchers, and that is still all that we want to do.

Thank you for the support you have shown us and the feedback that you have given us. We are always available via email ([email protected]) should you have any questions. 

Joe & The Slinger Team

Slinger, Platform, Ball Tube & More!
over 5 years ago – Wed, Jan 30, 2019 at 01:19:57 AM

Slingers,

As we mentioned in our most recent update, we were experiencing some issues with our PCB and had ordered 3 new ones for further testing. I am happy to announce that we have solved the issue and do not anticipate the issues returning. Upwards and onwards we go! 

Over the past few months we have been working on making some minor changes to Slinger to enhance its overall performance, reduce its weight and increase its ball capacity - below are pictures and videos of our final prototype which is, as of this week, fully working and ready for production.

In future updates we will get more into the changes that were made to Slinger but the most important one’s to point out are ball speed and capacity.

Throughout the past few months of testing it became clear to us that balls launching out at speeds of over 45 MPH were both unnecessary and unsustainable to the makeup of Slinger. When hitting balls at increased speeds on a constant basis, our test results showed that the motor and battery had significantly less play time and would reduce its overall lifetime drastically, so we have reduced the launch speed. This in turn allowed us to switch out the motor and battery to ones more appropriate for the desired 45 MPH launch speed, which in turn made the bag lighter.

The next big change that were were able to make was in regards to the ball capacity. Many of you reached out to us about the ball capacity (36 closed and 72 open) which resulted in us creating The Hopper. But once we changed out the motor and battery, we were able to slightly rework the internals of Slinger allowing us to increase the ball capacity to over 72 balls closed and more than 100 balls with Slinger open, nearly doubling the initial capacity! Needless to say, this will drastically increase the amount of time that you can be on the court doing what you love, without stopping to collect balls. Speaking of picking up balls, we have received a working unit of our Ball Tube and it is beautiful - see video below.

As mentioned above, we will get into more details about these changes in coming updates but now, it’s time for pictures and videos of Slinger, and for the first time ever, the rotating platform!

We took Slinger to the court to take some videos and got in some great practice while doing so! Check out the video below to see Slinger and the rotating platform in action!

And here is another raw video that we took which we just love :)

And, the Slinger Ball Tube! 

While Slinger is ready to move into mass production, the set back with the PCB and general timeline has put us in a tight spot with the upcoming Chinese New Year which falls out on February 5th and lasts for almost 3 weeks. During this time all factories (and pretty much the whole country) shuts down. Which means that we will not be able to start making our molds for production until the factories reopen. 

In a nutshell, the good news is that we are ready to make our molds and move into production. The setback, is that our factories cannot start for another 3 weeks.

We are in touch with the factories to determine if/how we can speed up the process so that we can get you your Slingers as quickly as possible and will revert back with more information once we hear back from our factories.

Thank you for your continued patience and support. We are about to cross the finish line and are so grateful to have all of you along this journey with us.

- Joe & The Slinger Team

Come See Slinger!
over 5 years ago – Wed, Jan 30, 2019 at 12:48:09 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Happy Holidays + Update
over 5 years ago – Fri, Dec 28, 2018 at 01:11:39 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.