Hello All,

I am in a design class that requires one to design a mechanical
device and then prototype your design. My group chose to design a
machine that will test hockey sticks. We did this by modeling the
motion of a hockey stick during a slap shot then creating a mechanism
that will trace this motion. After many repititions of this motion,
the hockey stick with fracture and we will have data about the hockey
stick's strength, load tolerance...yada yada yada. We have finished
the prototype and are now onto the final report. One of our topics
that needs to be covered in the final report is if there are any
current designs. I know of designs that test golf balls/clubs and
other various sporting goods, but for the life of me I cannot find any
that test hockey sticks. So can one of you fantastic researchers find
an example of such a tester?

Thanks in Advance,
Neil

http://www.astm.org/SNEWS/NOVEMBER_2004/morehouse_nov04.html -- while
their objective was strengthening the face/safety helmets used in
football...and eventually in the sport of hockey...they did also
similate the speed of the puck like you did in your development of the
hockey stick tester.

Ironically, Prof Emeritus Morehouse from the Penn State University,
was a founding member of the committee focusing on sport equipment
safety and was later the "head of the U.S. delegation to ISO/TC83/SC5
on Ice Hockey Equipment and Facilities" as related in this November
2004, article in ASTM STANDARDIZATION, which I hope that you found
before your semester was over last term.

http://www.boni.com/ - hockey puck shooting machine

In reviewing an array of hockey equipment sites though I couldn't find
anything that referenced that it could withhold the strength of x,
etc.  The sites generally promoted the look and feel of a single
composite stick rather than its added safety features of being a
single composite stick.

I am not finding much in way of specific hockey stick testing as a
result; and, although there appears to be a puck shooting machine, it
doesn't appear to be designed such that it would test the strength of
the sticks.

At any rate, I hope that you were able to find those articles prior to
the end of last semester term!

K

"In summer 2001, Easton Sports designed and built a Hockey
Stick-hitting robot, also known as a 'Hockey stick-testing machine.'
It is used to determine the performance of the hockey sticks
manufactured by Easton Sports.
This Hockey stick-testing machine is being built for use in Easton
Sports' Van Nuys, California facility. It will be used to test hockey
stick concepts and designs before they are put into production. Hockey
stick performance measured on the robot will be compared to live
player performance."

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=4269826