November 2009 - January 2011

Ice Cream Scooper Failure Analysis

This investigation was done in my strength of materials course by my team and I. For the project we created a story of the store being sued because a metal piece of the ice cream scooper breaking off of the scooper and being served to a customer. Then to deal with the lawsuit the store was bringing us in to investigate if that was possible with the way the scooper breaks. As a group we discovered why the ice cream scoopers were breaking and if a metal shard breaking off was even possible.
Though after the project ended I used our calculations to find a way to reduce the amount of ice cream scooper breakage. My solution was to change the way the ice-cream scooper was being held. This change was to hold the ice cream scooper closer to the bowl of the scooper rather then the end of the shaft. This new way of holding the scooper made such a noticeable difference in preventing ice cream scooper breakage that it has become the official way employees are trained to hold the scooper. It is estimated to have saved the store $600 a year on broken scoopers.