Attaching metal to plastic

[jasonfodor]

So, I'm off to college and my little brother is bummed out I'm not there to use our baseball machine with him.
I'm thinking of setting up an automatically feeder for him as a weekend project when I go home to visit in a few weeks.
Here's the pitching machine we have from SpinBall. Essentially you put a ball into the ball feeder tube chute (red arrow) and the pitching machine spits the ball out with it's spinning wheels.



Now, the automatic feeder essentially stores baseballs and releases one every 10 seconds or so into the pitching machine for you, eliminating the need to have someone feed the machine baseballs.





Here is a makeshift feeder someone made (not sure what they used as the motor, and not sure how it attaches to the machine).




I was able to find two automatic feeders online from Heater Sports for only $60, which is certainly affordable and probably a better route than making my own feeder.




The two poles on the automatic feeder attaches to their two holes on their pitching machine, as shown below.


Heater Pitching Machine

But my pitching machine doesn't have two holes for their automatic feeder, so now the million dollar question is, how do I attach their automatic feeder onto my pitching machine?

(1) My ball chute (where baseballs go in - red arrow on the first picture and the two images below) is actually removable. It has a bracket it attaches to. My preference is to some how use Heater Sports feeder and some sort of flexable computer monitor arm and attaching it to my bracket of my pitching machine then I can easily use flexible tubing to connect the feeder to my ball chute. But the hard part is how do I attach the automatic feeder to a computer monitor arm/holder.
(2) Probably the easiest method would be to attach the automatic feeder directly to my ball chute. It's made of hard plastic and should hold up the weight of the feeder and baseballs. But I have no idea how I'd attach the automatic feeder to my ball chute.
(3) Third method would be to some how get the automatic feeder on it's separate tripod stand (similar to what SpinBall's automatic feeder is) then I could easily use flexible tubing to connect it to my pitching machine. Again, the part that needs figuring out is how to attach the automatic feeder onto a tripod.

Have basic typical tools most households have (drill, screwdriver, wrench etc.), don't have access to or know how to weld.



my insert ball chute


my insert ball chute

 

[Silentrunning]

Could you drill and tap a couple of holes so it could be bolted together?

 

[jasonfodor]

Could you drill and tap a couple of holes so it could be bolted together?

how would I do that?

They do sell the back half of the u-brace off one of their pitching machines separately for $50. It has the two holes on top for their feeder. Might go down that route, but again, I need to figure out how to get this back half of the U-brace on a tripod by itself. Then it's just flexible hosing to run the ball to my pitching machine
-OR-
cut off the half U (bottom part) on the u-brace, so it's just the round pipe and feeder holder (top part) and attach that directly to my pitching machine. Again, the question is how would I attach it to my machine