MIT inconel department griddles fabrication

Tom's "thirty-thousand-dollar griddles" — four Inconel sheet griddles made from surplus material in the early 1990s, used at department steak fries during his tenure as department head. Used to illustrate Inconel as a $30/lb fabricated material and the price scale of nickel-base alloys.

Now, we used to have steak fries in the department. Back in the early 1990s I had some leftover Inconel sheet, left over from some surplus, and I had four griddles, four grills, made out of this. I'd designed them, and over in Building 13 we used to have steak fries on registration day when I was department head. I used to call these my thirty-thousand-dollar griddles, because the four of them weighed about a thousand pounds. If you think of Inconel sheet as back then about thirty dollars a pound fabricated, if you'd gone out to purchase these you would have probably paid thirty thousand dollars for them. I paid about fifteen hundred dollars to have them fabricated, but the metal in them is great. They will last forever.