Materials
“We said time and time again that we’ve get one shot; nothing can go wrong,” confides Kevin Cloherty. That’s a lot of pressure in the field of engineering, where iteration is everything.
Six graduate students from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, an IACMI member, are huddling around a Go No Go machine. Organizers are using a three-point bend test to observe the amount of force required for a pickleball paddle to show 1/16th of an inch of deflection. They’re hoping all three of the paddles they’ve fabricated for the first competition of its kind at SAMPE (Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering) will meet tight specifications.