Basketball hoop

It's one of those Sunday afternoons when I feel like writing another blog post. Hopefully this one actually happens. So here it goes:

My kid have one of these from as a birthday gift. My wife told me I need to put a more positive tone to my design analysis of products. So in the spirit of Joel Osteen's the-glass-is-half-full approach to live (sarcasm implied), let me spend some time learning about the good things from this design.

The basketball hoop is composed of 5 main parts: the base, the static post, the telescoping post, the backboard, and the hoop. The height is adjustable on the telescoping post with notches that can be locked into position. The backboard is inserted into the telescoping post and snaps into place. The hoop is fixed to the backboard using interference friction fit.

First of all, I like the simplicity of the design. It can be easily manufactured with blow molding. It is modular enough to ship in a box. However, some of the snap-fit is poorly designed/manufactured. Notice in the picture below that the hoop is tilted/bowed down a few degrees. At the edge of the hoop, the deflection is about 3-4 inches. It is significant enough to affect the function of the design, maybe not necessarily negatively though, since it actually makes it easier to score :)

This can simply be improved in the tolerance design of the backboard hole and post assembly. In addition, having the post be inserted deeper into the hole and meet a positive stop inside the backboard will help locate the assembly with better precision. I'm sure there are even better attachment strategy between the backboard and the post that will allow self-datuming on rigid surfaces, but I cannot think of anything practically useful right now. Please comment on this post about your ideas for this.

The locking mechanism to fix the height of the hoop is ingenious design. The locking mechanism is self-datuming and self-tightening because the weight of the hoop and telescoping post actually rotates the locking piece in such a way that it increases the engagement and preload of the lock. Cool idea!

Finally, the base is fill-able with water or sand in order to increase weight and stability of the whole structure. Because the hoop sticks out forward though, I would argue that making the base's center of gravity offset to the rear (not symmetrical) will increase the load capacity of the hoop under usage. This is typical in most basketball hoop structure where weights are attached at that very rear end to compensate players dunking and hanging loads in the front.