An Example of Engineering That Made Me Happy.

Efficiency for the end user is something that often receives little or no attention these days, so this was a pleasant surprise. It also appeals to my machismo and mechanical tinkerer aspects. If you are a man, I can almost guarantee you will have at least a faint smile on your face after this post.

Just now at work, I had to take a 200lbs. pump out of its crate for photography, and then I was going to have to put the crate back together. I was not looking forward to the job. The crate in question is made with nails about every two inches, and the wood is too heavy to break without application of a large amount of force.

Then I noticed the bolts.

The bottom of the crate walls have a few bolts on each side. I looked inside, and the bolts were run into T-nuts in some "2x" lumber on the platform/bottom of the box. Nothing else was holding the crate's top to its bottom. I undid the bolts and the top lifted off with no effort. When I was done, I put the top on backwards and the bolt holes still lined up. No hammers, pry bars, or splinters involved. I had the pump photographed and re-crated in the time it would have taken to knock the crate down if it had been constructed like most of the crates we get through here. Oh, and the bottom of the crate is exactly wide enough to fit a pallet jack.

Wonderful.