The final goal of our Freshman Design project is to create a custom wood baseball bat that has the largest “sweet spot” possible. The “sweet spot” is the location on the bat where the most energy is transferred to the ball, resulting in the best possible hit. To do this, we will start by testing on existing quality wood bats. This will give us an idea of the general design of bats and how that affects the location and size of the “sweet spot”. From what we learn from these tests, we will design our own bat that we will then have turned on a CNC lathe. After the bat is created, we will redo the initial test to our bat to compare it to what is available on the market. Finally, we will take it to a batting cage where we will conduct qualitative tests on it to see how it performs in a real life scenario.
