Method of making plastic ball sleeve assembly

A method of making a ball sleeve assembly including a tubular plastic sleeve and a plurality of hard metal spheres comprising the steps of:

• forming into a roll a continuous sheet of a plastic characterized by being permanently deformable by application of compressive force thereto and having a thickness dimension less than the diameter of said spheres and a predetermined width dimension between a pair of parallel side edges of said sheet,
• unrolling said roll and severing from said continuous sheet an end thereof to form a sleeve blank defining a flat plane and having a pair of end edges perpendicular to said side edges of said sheet,
• forming on a first of said end edges a tang and on a second of said end edges a notch having a shape corresponding to the shape of said tang,
• cold forming a plurality of ball sockets in said sleeve blank by applying compressive force to said sleeve blank perpendicular to said flat plane,
• cold forming a plurality of integral living hinges on said sleeve blank parallel to said end edges by applying compressive force to said sleeve blank perpendicular to said flat plane,
• inserting each of said spheres in a respective one of said ball sockets,
• cold forming said sleeve blank by applying compressive force thereto perpendicular to said flat plane to define an integral retaining means operative to prevent dislodgement of said spheres from said ball sockets while exposing a pair of surface segments of each of said spheres on opposite sides of said sleeve blank, and
• forming a tubular sleeve by flexing said sleeve blank at said living hinges until one of said end edges of said sleeve blank abuts the other of said end edges of said sleeve blank with said tang in interlocking relationship in said notch.