The LVI engineers had a 2-day engineering workshop on Wednesday and Thursday at UCL. The team of six is working towards their Industrial Cadet Gold Award. Now in its fifth year at FHS, the programme partners student teams with mentors in engineering companies, giving them a real-world engineering problem to solve over seven months. The program culminates with a written technical report, a model of their project and a presentation to a panel of external engineers. This year, our LVI team is working with PCS Instruments and is tasked with building a demonstration version of the company’s elastohydrodynamic (EHD) machine.

The workshop took place at UCL’s MechSpace — a state-of-the-art facility for designing and building. The pupils took advantage of the super-fast 3D printers and laser cutters available at MechSpace and made tremendous progress on the Gold Award Project. In addition to this, their Engineering mentors attended both days and were available to support their work and answer questions.

Here is what Dyala had to say about day one:

“We met at 9 am on the first day in Mechspace UCL’s purpose-built engineering facility. After a short safety briefing, we were left to explore and quickly claimed a spacious ‘buildshop’ shop on the ground floor. We worked hard on our project, and although we experienced several setbacks, we got through them tactfully- as a team. Before we knew it, lunch was served! We were provided with tasty sandwiches and crisps, the perfect fuel for our second 3-hour session of the day. Right before our day ended, UCL mechanical engineering students showed us what they’re currently working on as a part of their course. This included a rocket ( that went as high as 3,300 metres!) and the world’s most efficient car.”

Dr MacTavish, Head of Physics