So, the time of year for carving pumpkins is upon us. Today my family took part in this yearly event. When my Dad took out his reciprocating saw (we used a power drill last year and next year we’re gonna use a CNC mill 
) to form his pumpkin I got to thinking what other interesting things can happen when you mix pumpkins with engineers? Anyone have any interesting stories or comments concerning this?
At my work we’re planning a pumpkin carving machine that takes a .jpg in black and white and carves it out with a dremel on an arm. I’ll throw a picture up here once we finish it.
I saw this blog last year do a cnc picture carve thought it would aways be fun to do it. http://lumenlab.com/2008/10/pumpkin/
Dremel carving. Its a bit messy but very precise and easy. Just use the drywall plunge cutter.
Yeah, be prepared to clean your ceilings, your walls, and your cat.
The World Championship Punkin’ Chunkin’ (based right here in Delaware) is still my favorite.
For those not in the know… the competition has a few different types of Chunkers.
-Air Cannons
-Centrifugal
-Catapults
-Trebuchets
-Human Powered
-Torsion
Teams are going for distance.
Pumpkins that disintegrate before leaving the barrel do not count.
A few weeks ago, some engineering students at my school were given standard trebuchets (with certain allowed modifications) and the challenge:
Hit a tractor tire at a certain distance. The “victims” were about the size of two fists.
Some pumpkins survived… the ones that weren’t shot.
http://trampolinesundays.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/pumpkin.JPG
This is still my very favorite.
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That is unreal, Dave.
Someone must have spent days making that.
Andrea’s right - this event is amazing. The winner last year shot their pumpkin 4483.51 feet. (Probably with an air cannon)
Last year a couple of MOE students took 2nd place wiith their school machine in the youth trebuchet division, flinging their pumpkin 694.06 feet.