Development of an in-line putter for handicap friendly tabletop golf games

The market for handicapped tabletop games is severely untapped. The students of the Red Team in the course 2.009 (Product Engineering Processes, a capstone design project course in the Mechanical Engineering Department) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology attempted to produce a tabletop golf game that would even the playing field between handicapped and able-bodied individuals. This game, Microgolf, was not received well by the faculty. One of the largest downfalls of Microgolf was an inherent lack of control over the putting aspect of the game. The putter designed by the 2.009 Red Team was difficult to use as it shot the ball perpendicular to the line of sight path between the ball and the hole used by the user to aim. The goal of this thesis is to design a user friendly putter that would provide a substantial amount of control over the shooting aspects of the game, thus truly leveling the playing field between handicapped and able-bodied individuals, and providing a more exciting playing environment. After several rounds of modeling and optimization, a final design is accomplished that accommodates all of the functional requirements desired by players.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Berberian, Sam J

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sang-Gook Kim.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40397

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/40397