Primary School Engineers
Design Cable Cars

Ten excited Norfolk school children visited 3D Systems in Hemel Hempstead, U.K. They came by invitation by 3D Systems with the participation of Investment Castings Ltd., of Hatfield and Powertrain Technologies of Attleborough.

The group of 11-year-old boys and girls from Old Buckenham County Primary School near Norwich were the two winning teams in an innovative cable car design competition. The Year 6 pupils were set the the challenge last term by professional engineer and parent Andrew Barnes, MD of Powertrain Technologies Ltd., a design development consultancy in Attleborough, Norfolk.

The design project was the brainchild of Andrew Barnes - also the chairman of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) - who is concerned at the lack of skilled engineers in the U.K. and keen to introduce technology into classes at all levels.

“We are facing an increasing skills shortage. These children are our future engineers, yet they have no real perception of what we do, said Barnes. We have to get them interested before they start to form fixed ideas as to their future careers. This is especially true of the girls, who are poorly represented in the engineering community.”

He took the initiative by organizing and running the cable car competition over a 6-week period, during which the 5 teams of boys and girls had to make a model, produce a report and carry out a practical experiment to prove the viability of their designs.

The cable cars had to be powered by environmentally friendly means and had to successfully transport an egg on three journeys between two desks without dropping it. The winning design was made of a plastic ice-cream carton, an egg box and strips of material. The original model was put onto CAD by Powertrain Technologies, then transformed into an accurate thermoplastic model by sending the digital information directly to the Actua 3-D printer.

The children listened to a description and saw a video on how prototypes are made at 3D Systems, before being presented with the model. They were thrilled to be able to watch an Actua machine at work on the premises.

Investment Castings, Ltd. in Hatfield had also kindly agreed to participate in the children’s project by producing and presenting a handsome precision casting of the cable car design. Director Mark Wilson was on hand to explain the history and intricacies of investment casting and how their model had been transformed directly from 3D Systems’ Actua printer into a model then into a cast metal. Investment Castings specializes in fast response precision investment castings and is able to handle a wide range of material specifications.