Static shocks when touching the control panel

This article relates to both the V1 and V2 machines. To determine which machine you have, please read this article.

Sometimes, when you touch the control panel of your ball machine, you may experience a small static shock. There are two possible causes for this:

1. A build up of static charge on your ball machine; or
2. A build up of static charge on you

This is normally caused by the type of tennis court you are playing on, where synthetic grass courts are the major contributor.

The first step is to determine where the static electricity is building up. Is it on the machine, or is it on you (or possibly both)? To do this, please conduct this simple experiment.

• After playing or walking around your court try touching something metal other than the ball machine (eg, a ball basket). If you receive a static shock, you can confirm that you are building up static charge.

If this is the case, you may like to try the following suggestions:

• If you are playing at a club with multiple court surfaces to choose from, try playing on a different surface that doesn’t cause static charge build up.
• When you touch the machine, try touching the control panel with the palm of your hand first to soften the impact of the static shock before touching the buttons with your fingertips. Alternatively, you could touch the base of the machine with 4 fingertips at the same time.
• Dry skin is one of the known causes of static build up. Try using moisturiser or lotion to see if that helps.

If the earlier experiment points to the machine having the static charge build up (not you), then we would recommend you first confirm that it is only static charge. To do this, you simply touch the control panel to receive a static shock. Then if you touch the control panel for a 2nd time and you do not receive a shock, this will confirm it was just a static build up. If you touch it a 2nd time and get a 2nd shock, then we recommend you get in touch with your local dealer to have your machine inspected.

Once you have confirmed it is only static charge building up in your machine, we recommend you check that the ground chain is still attached to the base of your machine. This chain is designed to dissipate the static charge in your machine. If that is still in place, we recommend you use the same suggestions above (different court surface, palm of your hand or moisturiser) to deal with this issue.