It began with four mechanical engineering cadets in 2014 for a service project done for the West Point Cadet Chapel on behalf of the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering. Class of 2014 Cadets Christina Cox, Michael Deschene, Richard Glover and Mark Hesford began the tall order of creating keys to replace the keys for the historic and antique door locks of the cadet chapel. The chaplains have been using makeshift keys according to Class of 2016 Cadet Jeremy Matsumoto, who took the project over as an independent study.
The group developed three potential techniques for reverse engineering the key, 3D scanning, using a point grabber tool and taking measurements with calipers to manually build a 3D CAD model. The mission of the project was the West Point Cadet Capstone team getting involved in reverse engineering, fabricating, testing and reproducing an antique Cadet Chapel key by May 2015 in order to replenish the diminishing supply of those historic artifacts. Full Story»