LTA Part VII - Jugads

In our 6^th Semester, we had a manufacturing processes project involving all processes involved in manufacturing a basic tool. Unfortunately, even if one wanted to do something, there were some internal problems always in workshops. We faced the same thing. Chunnu, Thakur and me were together and decided to make a Screw Jack (the one used in heavy vehicles – trucks, jeeps and all). The steps involved making a pattern - outer structure of wood and then use it to cast a metal structure out of it and so on.. (I won’t get into the details).


There was a lot of wood rotting away in the workshop but to get a small amount of it we had to get forms sign from n places, plead to workshop people who had their own inside politics on who owned the wood. None wanted the responsibility. At last we went to the market and bought wood on our at a pocket burning Rs 600 for a small quantity. We brought it back to the workshops and started making a pattern of the screw jack out of it. After successfully doing it, again the struggle started to get the molten iron and other things to cast the jack into a metallic form. After weeks of this struggle, few days before the evaluation, we decided we had enough. We stopped “Engineering” and started the process of “Reverse Engineering”. A ready made Screw Jack was bought (at 1/3^rd the price of the wood!!). By roaming a whole day in the industrial area, we found out some private workshop. We asked the person to machine it and remove the paint on it and do the machining like some naïve person has done it – you know a bit scratch here and there, roughness and irregular cuttings made by the tool etc. In the meantime we worked upon the things we had to say in the viva so that we all have the same version and not bungle up. The machinist had done a good job – literally so we had to roughen up it a bit more in our workshop. At the end what we had was quite exclusive. The wooden pattern which we had reached from normal engineering processes, the screw jack which we had reached through what we called reverse engineering and a story to tell the prof how we had made it. (Though I believe the prof would have known that it was readymade. That kind of stuff was impossible to produce in the age old workshops of the college). But There was a lot of hard work involved in our project, roaming whole days to find wood from some furniture shop, finding shops to get a screw jack and searching for workshops in the industrial area (which we realized is 1 hell of a big place with hundreds of small units). I guess the college was the place where more than fundas of Mech Engineering we learnt how to do jugads… Well, ‘I Guess’ would be the wrong choice of words. If I also consider how we did our Major Project (and in fact a lot of other projects and assignments), I can say for sure that we did learn to do Jugads in college. And if you think Jugad is a negative word, a bad thing – May be you are wrong. It is another way of saying “Nothing is Impossible”. It's a word signifying that there are many ways to reach your destination. You need not take the normal, regular one everytime. ;)