In 2009 the dexterity game Bisikle was released. Similar to PitchCar, the major innovation it added was the Z-Ball, a small plastic ball with numerous metal spheres inside it to give it more weight and change the behavior of the ball based on the type of flick and the English applied, allowing for things like stopping short or managing a curve without railing. Bisikle was intended to be the first of many games featuring the Z-Ball and in 2010 the game RoadZters was released (very much like Bisikle but racing cars instead of bikes). At the same time, the "high grip" Z-Ball was introduced which had a less glossy surface giving it a little more friction than the traditional Z-Ball. Unfortunately, in 2011 or 2012, it seems like the produces of these games and the accessories dropped off the face of the internet, making both the games and the Z-Ball hard to find.

I have long had a copy of RoadZters and I recently acquired a copy of Bisikle second hand and I started looking for some more Z-Balls for another game idea I had related to PitchCar, but I found they were either very expensive or not really available at all. Of course, having a 3D printer this seemed like a problem I could solve myself, so I did some detective work about the Z-Ball itself and the weights inside it. a few things to note, the number of weights (roughly BB sized, but a little lighter than the BBs I bought) was not consistent, with one of my Z-Balls having 7, one of them having 11, and the other being somewhere in between. It also seems like the density and weight of the material of the regular Z-Ball and the High Grip Z-Ball differ quite a bit. I also found that each half of the Z-Ball had a set of spherical indentations inside, like of like a golf ball that had been turned inside out, but that these did not exist along the seam.

With this information, I used OpenSCAD to generate a hollowed out sphere with little dimples inside that were slightly larger than the diameter of the BBs I got of of Amazon. Originally I had some holes for short filament alignment pins, but I found that to be a little too tedious to work with at that size and my final design just uses CA glue to glue the sides together (taking care to try not to glue the BBs together or to the walls). Note: the pre-assembly photo is of the prior iteration with the alignment pins.

After quite a bit of trial and error, I found I was able to make a reasonable facsimile of the Z-Ball and I plan to use them with my Bisikle and PitchCar track.

For more information about the games and examples of how to make some interesting shots with the Z-Ball in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh1yqqST-jE

I doubt many people care about this 15 year old game, but since I did the work to create a model, I figured it would share it. Have fun!