Hammer Prototyping - Back to Basics
Divulged in the basics of manufacturing, Purdue Mechanical Engineering students strive to improve the design of a 21-century icon — the hammer.
“They introduced all sorts of teaching moments to the hammer project,” said John Wheeler, machinist at Purdue . “Learning something about threads, how to use a tap, running the die, making a knurled handle on the lathe... these are things that students previously had never seen before.”
Transcript
00:00:07 I remember I took ME263. They told us about the hammer project, I remember being relatively excited about it. It does hold a great deal of cultural value. What if there was just a way to make the hammer, the original hammer, better? The task we were given was to develop a project that would help someone with no experience in the machine shop, learn the fundamental skills that will help them in future endeavors. I thought the mascot Purdue Pete had a very iconic looking hammer. Make one end of it round, make the other end of it flanged. So this is the first prototype.
00:00:43 It has a threading head and it does have knurling. It has all of the basic features, it just wasn't very optimized. Prototype two: the handle is about two inches longer. We flipped this flange from vertical to horizontal. And now when you thread these two together, they fit together quite well and look pretty seamless. Learning something about threads, how to use a tap, running the die, the knurled handle. These are things that previously these students have never seen before. The old one is very top heavy.
00:01:14 This one's very nicely balanced. It's much lighter. It's comfortable to hold in your hand. The word that I've heard people describe it as is very sleek looking, very modern. Definitely is an eye catcher. When you see that, that reflection off of it and it shines. And I think that's kind of a good way to describe what we did. We kind of just modernized an old project a little bit. It seems that it went over well, and I guess everybody in ME 263 made one. So it's pretty cool.
00:01:41 They're leaving with confidence. They're leaving with positive contact points, right? And success. They leave with a smile on their face when they're done. Everybody I've talked to says that they like it. They're getting the learning objectives out of it, but it's not too heavy. It's really cool that, you know, we're going to be a part of Purdue for a long time going forward.