Hello,
My friend and I are currently students enrolled in an engineering course at Union Endicott High School in New York. For our class, we are finding and solving a problem. We are trying to find out whether our problem has merit. We feel that picking up shotgun shells is an annoying and tedious task. We plan to create a device that assists in the cleanup of these shells and allows the user to dispose of the shells in whatever method they desire. We would appreciate it if you could take the time to complete the following survey.

Click here to take the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=X6gidPrZQcpyzO_2bhvJv6XA_3d_3d

Thank you,
Nick and Joe

-bump-

Recycle????? Why not reload??
We pick them up and drink beer when we are finished shooting.
Survey= waste of time for sure an engineering student could have done a better job than this.

As for disposal you should have allowed for more than one response. I throw away shells from skeet and trap shooting since this type of ammunition is so cheap at Walmart it is not worth the effort of reloading them. When hunting with my 10 guage Remington SP-10 auto-loading shotgun I do try to pick the shells up for reloading since 10 guage ammunition is expensive. However, in this case, rather than a device that merely picks up the shells, what I really need is something that can find them. The SP-10 ejects the shells a fair distance and in tall grass or reeds it can be very hard to find them.

Dude, lay of, these are obviously highschool students and it's definately not a waste of time trying to get as many opinions on a new product as possible. Also, they were looking to do a feasibility study and possibly nothing more. It's obvious to me you haven't ever engineered a damn thing....

Reload????? Reloading is recycling!!
Your post = a bigger waste of time for sure a "stand up philosopher" would have done a better job at knowing this before posting and looking an ass.

Much appreciated. Yes, we are just trying to figure out how wanted a device like this would be and what the specifications of the device would have to be if we were to manufacture such a device. We have also done some studies on devices that are already on the market but they seem to be fairly expensive ($400+) so we are looking for a cost-efficient solution if we continue with this. Also any suggestions for a solution that you feel the survey did not cover would be much appreciated.

The ideas that we have for our device would be able to assist with this problem to some degree. I feel that it would be difficult to make a device that couldfind the shellsin taller grass. Instead my idea would possibly be a device that can roll through the grass and pick up the shells even if they are hidden. Although this isn't the most accurate method seeing as you would potentially miss a few or search in areas without any shells, I think that it would be cheaper while still preserving time.

I would think that something like a tow behind or push type lawn sweeper would do a pretty nice job of picking up shells at a trap or skeet range.
All of that goes out the window as soon as the grass length gets up over about 3 1/2 or 4".

Consider a tool like the pecan picker. This low tech device is handy for picking pecans off the ground. Push it down on them. They get squeezed through the wires and caught in the basket. $25
http://www.cleanairgardening.com/pecanpicker.html
/Masters Degree in Engineering

This device seems like a fairly good tool but I'm not sure how well it would work for what we are planning. It would depend on how each range would collect their shells (every person cleans up after themself or if they have a person who cleans them all up etc.). We are more focused on a range cleaning up a larger amount of shells in comparison to only picking up a few shells here or there. Though if we were to focus on individuals, this device would be very useful as something to examine and possibly modify.