Developing Engineers

This year has been the first full year for us here at developingengineers.com, and what a year it’s been!  We’ve been posting on a whole range of issues, engineering in the news, exciting new and incredible historic innovations, we’ve reported on science and engineering events, as well as sharing some of our own experiences.  So let me take you through our year in blogs…

In January we started off discussing specialisms in engineering, first asking how you discover or decide your own area of expertise, before discussing the value of doing a PhD.  Hardly surprising looking back, when higher education was big in the news, still reeling from the decision to triple tuition fees for undergraduate students (which to date has resulted in a 15% drop in UCAS applications, although ‘thankfully’ only around 8% for engineering subjects).  We also posted on the upcoming Formula 1 season, which while slightly one-sided has still been one of the most technologically remarkable to date.

Early in the year we also shared a number of our experiences and advice on job interviews, and in particular answering those tricky STAR questions that employers love to fill their application forms with!  March saw us highlighting some of the exceptional work done to inspire young people into engineering, in which we commented on International Women’s Day as well as The Big Bang Fair.

Inevitably, we waded in to the debate around nuclear power that started after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the resulting meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant.  Along with the rest of the engineering profession, our writers tried to rationalise the debate by highlighting the inherent safety of modern nuclear plant designs and the exceptional circumstances experienced at Fukushima.  Even so, in the aftermath of the disaster a number of prominent countries have decided to abandon nuclear power altogether, which presents yet another challenge in trying to combat global emissions, and led us to try and assess the impact of the Japanese earthquake on the energy industry.

Rounding off the first quarter, we even got an early sighting of the Airbus A400M!

In April we looked at how both historical and state-of-the-art engineering can inspire us, with a look at the SS Great Britain and the Bloodhound Super Sonic Car.  Both got follow ups, with a two-part tour of the SS Great Britain and a piece on the phenomenal Bloodhound SSC project – I think it goes without saying that we can’t wait to see the car come together during 2012 ready for it’s 1000mph world land speed record attempt in 2013!

Another issue never far from the fore is that of sustainability, and before Easter we discussed not simply the technological, but the ethical and philosophical aspects of sustainable development.  Whilst innovation will allow us to reduce our energy and material requirements, perhaps more important is a cultural shift towards re-using and recycling the resources we have.

Over the summer I’m sure many people enjoyed watching the latest BBC series of The Apprentice, however many engineers took exception to comments a certain Lord Sugar made when ‘firing’ a contestant.  Interestingly however, Lord Sugar redeemed himself by hiring an engineer at the end of the competition!

A big event this summer (which we surprisingly covered!) was the quadrennial World Scout Jamboree, which attracted almost 40,000 Scouts from over 140 countries to a site near Kristianstad in Sweden.  Having been lucky enough to be asked to act as an ‘external expert’ to design and build a range of bicycle powered activities, I thought I’d share my experiences through a trio of posts covering the design, prototyping and final manufacture of the bike rigs for the Jamboree!

Getting ‘back on track’, we were also lucky enough to experience the IMechE’s annual Formula Student competition held at Silverstone.  Attracting over 130 teams from around the world, this year was particularly special as it featured, for the first time, a team from Gaza University who spoke of the added challenges of designing, manufacturing and transporting a working race car, when subjected to such severe restrictions.

During the autumn we covered a number of issues facing engineers, both current and future, as we commented on the case against 6 Italian seismologists for failing to predict the L’Aquila earthquake, as well as discussing how we can communicate our passion for engineering to inspire the next generation.

As a suitable finale to the year was our coverage of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, which is hoped to become established alongside the Nobel Prizes with its £1,000,000 prize for engineering innovation.  In an unprecedented show of support, the leaders from all three of the UK’s biggest political parties appeared together to announce the new prize, which will be administered by the Royal Academy for Engineering and supported by a number of prominent engineering companies.

It’s been a busy year for us here at Developing Engineers, but we’re thrilled with the sheer number of visitors we’ve had from across the world.  In 2012 you can look forward to more articles covering the vast spectrum of engineering, a revamp of the site making it more accessible, and perhaps even a non-English blog post or two!

Thanks for reading this year, we look forward to seeing you back here in 2012!

If you’ve been reading my posts over the past couple of months, you’ll know that I’ve been involved in designing and building a whole load of bicycle-powered activities for the 22nd World Scout Jamboree (WSJ), which is currently going on near the village of Rinkaby in southern Sweden.  Well, this is the final post of my ‘mini-series’ to let you know how it finally went!

My trip to Sweden was, shall we say, a long one – starting with a 6.30am train from Sheffield, an IMechE Trustee Board meeting in London followed by a flight to Copenhagen and a train to Kristianstad in Sweden!  In any case I arrived at the WSJ site just before midnight – just in time for bed!

When we got working the next day progress was initially slow, with some quick re-designing needed to accommodate the new mountain bikes we’d been given, as well as difficulties keeping hold of our tools before they were inevitably ‘borrowed’ to be used a mile across site!  Added to having to assemble a 2m tall traditional Swedish Dala Horse (made in England), insulate an ‘airlock’ for a shipping container-come-freezer as well as come up with a hundred other ‘quick and dirty’ construction solutions across the WSJ site, for the first couple of days the bike activities did seem to be ‘at risk’!

However, once these other ‘distractions’ were out the way, we assembled a crack bike rig building team featuring:

Me! (designer and draughtsman)
Jakob (Swedish woodsman; master of all things sharp and pointy – can fashion literally anything out of a chunk of wood using only his knife)
Miles (British bloke who rather enjoys his power tools; after 27 years living in Sweden still desperately seeking a good cup of tea)
Dave (another mechanical engineer; creator of the Dala Horse!)

The air became thick with sawdust and sparks flew (yes, we bought an angle grinder to use in our workshop/tent) but after the dust settled, in no time at all (about 14 hours) we had built ourselves 10 beautifully crafted bike stands!

p.s. if anyone needs any carpentry tips, just give us a shout, ok?

With a couple of days left before the opening ceremony, we fitted our electric generators (DC motors) and attached our water heaters, LED ‘Race around the World’ maps, Scalextric set (James Bond 007 edition) and mechanical water pumps – just in time for our International Service Team (IST) to test them!  Which brings me on to a question:

“How many Scouts does it take to boil a mug of water using a bicycle, an electric motor and a small resistance heater?”

The answer: it takes EIGHT Scouts to boil a mug of water – and even then it took them almost 20 minutes in shifts to get the water to about 95C!  A perfect lesson in how we take for granted the energy we use every day, I’d say!

To try and avoid dragging this post out for too long (and it’s already pretty long!) I’ll simply finish by saying that this has been one of the most satisfying projects I’ve ever been involved with (as well as one of the most exhausting!), not only as a proper hands-on bit of engineering and manufacturing, but because of the people I’ve met and worked with.  As long as one or two of the 39000 Scouts at the Jamboree go away with some appreciation of how we use energy, how you can transform it and manipulate it and may be even decides to try building a bicycle-powered generator for themselves, I’ll be happy!

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“What do you get if you add 8 years of mechanical engineering education, Scouting, 10m of Swedish timber, a ridiculous number of nuts and bolts, some garden hose, and about 100 man-hours?”

The start of a very poor joke?  No, I’m afraid not – but let me tell you what it does make…

A few days ago I set off for Sweden to spend a weekend building a prototype of some pedal-powered rigs for the World Scout Jamboree that’s going to be held near Kristianstad in August.  I thought I’d give a quick update about how we got on…

The weekend was a long one, but after starting on Friday with three hours sleep before our flight to Stockholm, and many hours spent in Swedish electronics and hardware stores, we were ready to go!

Powered by nothing but (illicitly smuggled) Yorkshire Tea, homemade Swiss role and the finest Swedish knock-offs of a famous American biscuit brand, we worked late into Friday night, were up bright and early Saturday (which was surprisingly easy as the Sun comes up at around 3am there) for a 14 hour stint… and then did the same again on Sunday! By around 9pm, we were finished.

What did we achieve? Well, our amazing spiral pump worked like a charm.  Running some rope off the bike’s rear rim and around a pulley wheel, we were able to make the pump spin beautifully via a custom made lubricated bearing (which I definitely think qualifies me to be called a tribologist!) and chuck out some water at a pretty good rate.

Even better than that, by mounting a DC scooter motor behind the rear tyre, and through a mere £100 (~1000SEK) worth of electronics, Dave (narrating), Miles and myself were able to achieve this…

Lighting a car bulb may not seem like much, but that’s a wonderfully smoothed and controlled 12.08V output you’re witnessing there – no mean feat, I can tell you! And yes, I am the slightly delirious, haggard looking idiot holding the bulb in the video.

Whilst there are some (a lot of) design changes to be made before we build the other 5-7 rigs in Sweden next month, it just goes to show what you can do with a bit of know-how and carpentry skills (and 10m of Swedish pine, a scooter motor, some garden hosepipe and plumbing fittings).  To be honest, for some therapeutic relaxation, I can’t think of anything better than your own DIY engineering project (though I suppose I would say that!)

To keep up with our progress, follow #WSJ2011bikes or @R_Thornton on Twitter.  More news to follow…

It’s been a while since my last post, one which you perhaps may have seen about volunteering that I wrote entirely whilst on a train.  Continuing this (so far one-off) tradition of blogging on public transport, I thought I’d write about my latest exploits whilst on a train and a plane (a McDonnell Douglas MD-82 if you must know) on my way to Sweden!  Why Sweden you may ask?  To build a prototype for a set of bicycle-powered generators of course!  Why else?!

This may sound like a fairly bizarre thing to do with your weekend, but I assure you it’s all in a good cause – the good cause being the bi-annual World Scout Jamboree which is being held in August this year, somewhere near the southern Swedish town of Kristianstad!  At this point, I feel it’s only fair to point out (mainly to avoid bringing shame on such a great organisation) that I’m not a Scout, I’ve never been a Scout and chances are, never will be a Scout.  Still, I’m not one to let such small details get in the way of a bit of good ol’ fashioned engineering.

The idea behind the Jamboree is basically this: 30,000+ Scouts from around the world will descend on an unsuspecting part of southern Sweden this Summer to get involved with and take part in a number of activities over the course of the 12 day Jamboree.  In order to make this a reality, hundreds of volunteers are needed to plan, organise, co-ordinate, design and build for the event – and that’s the bit where I fit in.

A friend of mine (who, incidentally is designing and building a large, traditional Swedish Dala horse, complete with horse-related music and terrible horse-related jokes) was asked if he knew anyone who could design and build a number of bicycle-powered generators to power a number of activities, not only to give the Scouts something to do, but at the same time raise awareness of some of the issues around energy supply and sustainability.

A horse walks into a bar and the barman says, “Why the long face?”

…anyway…

The challenge: to design and build 8-10 bicycle-powered rigs (some generating electricity, others utilised purely for their mechanical energy) to provide activities for 800+ Scouts per day to try out during the 12 day Jamboree.

The solution: remains to be seen….  Having come up with some beautiful designs for bike stands and mechanical pumps (with more than a little help from groups such as Engineers Without Borders: Sheffield Branch and Magnificent Revolution) based around some wonderfully sustainable Swedish timber, I’ve just been told by ‘our man in Sweden’ that we can’t easily get hold of cheap lengths of square-section (?!) – the first of many problems, I fear!

Over the next few weeks you can expect to see a few more posts like this, hopefully featuring such rich media content as photos, audio (horse music and jokes) and videos (comedy outtakes and possibly even some Scouts on a working bike rig or two!)

So watch this space!

Keep up-to-date with all Jamboree related matters by following the official Twitter feed @Jamboree2011, as well as my own exploits by following @R_Thornton and the hashtag #WSJ2011bikes (if I remember to use it!)