There are many homeowners that would like to maintain the trees around their homes but cannot do so. The drive of this project was to develop a 0g mechanism which would provide a senior citizen or an individual with limited upper body strength, with the ability to cut through branches that would otherwise pose challenging. The design would allow the end user to cut a branch by simply pulling a trigger. A branch cutting attachment was designed to attach to the front of a DeWALT cordless impact gun. This attachment will convert the rotational torque and motion from the impact gun into a shearing motion which can be utilized by a set of cutting blades to cut through the branches. This conversion came through a worm gear set that simultaneously changes the rotational direction of motion and increases the output torque of the impact gun through the gear set. The cutter was constructed from lightweight aluminum to keep the weight down as it is a hand held tool and was also designed to be easily attached and detached from the impact gun for ease of use. The design incorporated off the shelf blades so that in the event a blade was damaged during use a new blade was easy to obtain. Through testing it was found that the cutting attachment performed well on a variety of tree branch types and sizes up to 1-1/8”. It was also found that the attachment was easy to use by all user types.
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