This year has seen us run with the EDT Gold Engineering programme with our prospective Year 12 engineers and a team of six were selected by an external panel of EATON engineers: they were Minhaz Uddin, Isaac Brodie, Emelia Wood, Lily-Mai Emanuel, Keiron Pontin and Tom Larkin.
The team were given a live project to complete by EATONs. They had to produce a device which would hold more than one nylon plug in a CNT drilling machine to increase productivity and decrease the time spent loading/unloading the parts.
An intern (Curtis) from EATONs in Derby was the Team’s Engineering mentor this year, together with Adel Stubbs (Sixth Form Mentor) and Simon Awbery (Science teacher) as the schools mentors assisting with this programme. The Team had to complete this task over a period of 20 weeks and as part of the programme were invited to the University of Birmingham for a two-day workshop where they received further assistance to create a protype and experience life as a student.
The entire team – students and staff – have been meeting every week to design and create a protype, with the engineering assistance of Jeremy Hutton, which the Team then presented to a panel of Engineers on assessment day.
Our Team solely designed a protype that increased production by 600%, which was actually used by an engineering apprentice at the EATONs workplace in May and will be reproduced in a more sustainable and hardwearing material recommended by the Team to be used in the future.
The Team gained valuable skills over the 20 weeks, demonstrating teamwork, resilience, perseverance, creativity, problem solving, presenting and using their STEM and engineering knowledge to produce a valuable product for a local company.
Helen Barratt, Assistant Headteacher, said: “This project is part of our extensive careers package and works to stretch students beyond their mainstream courses by introducing them to new ideas, new experiences and the world of work. IT has seen huge commitment but both students and staff but has been immensely rewarding.”
If you would like to find out more about the EDT Gold Engineering Project click here.
