  The onset or demise of Kondo effect in a magnetic impurity on a metal surface
can be triggered, as often observed, by the simple mechanical nudging of a tip.
This mechanically-driven quantum phase transition must reflect in a
corresponding mechanical dissipation peak; yet, this kind of effect has not
been focused upon so far. Aiming at the simplest theoretical modeling, we
initially treat the impurity as a non-interacting resonant level turned
cyclically on and off, and obtain a dissipation per cycle which is proportional
to the hybridization $\Gamma$, with a characteristic temperature dependent
resonant peak value. A better treatment is obtained next by solving an Anderson
impurity model by numerical renormalization group. Here, many body effects
yield a dissipation whose peak value is now proportional to $T_K |\log T|$ so
long as $T\sim T_K$, followed for $T\sim \Gamma$ by a second high temperature
regime where dissipation is proportional to $\Gamma|\log T|$. The detectability
of Kondo mechanical dissipation in atomic force microscopy is discussed.
