The National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts, NESTA, in the UK has awarded an engineer, Giovanni Bisutti, £75,000 to develop a system for pneumatic tools, such as jack hammers, to reduce the effects of vibration on the operators. ‘White finger’ is caused by excessively vibrating tools that cause damage to the hands of the tool operators. The new system uses a water jacket shrouded around the tool that is used to increase the mass of the tool by 15kg. Water is transfered into the tool when in operation and is removed within 3 seconds when the tool is to be moved.
Read the article on the NESTA web site.