Snow Shovel
In the spirit of winter I decided to make something that is familiar to everyone who has experienced snow; a shovel. This is your classic shovel with a plastic handle and bucket and a wooden shaft. For the handle, I used the loft feature with a center line in order to design the curves. I was going to use a sweep but I wanted the base to be thicker then the upper part of the handle. This did not work as well as I had hoped because the curve ended up being thinner than I expected. To reinforce the handle, I created some ribs along the inside curves. I used the rib feature to create the grips on the underside of the handle. I used a number of extrudes to get the main contours of the shovel bucket. For the strengthening ridges on the shovel I used a sweep feature as well as a boss extrude. This had the condition up to next in order to get the sweep to taper away into the main part of the bucket. I hope you enjoy this shovel and use it with your imaginary snow. Happy Holidays!
Ian Jutras
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Mechanical Engineering 2013