A TEAM of four students from St Augustine’s Catholic High School in Redditch have reached the finals of a national engineering competition.
Nathan Harris, Charlotte, Lowe, Tom Field and Will Morgan, who have just started their final year (Year 13) at the school undertook a six-month project with the Engineering Education Scheme, a programme run by education charity the Engineering Development Trust (EDT).
The project was undertaken with local company Thorlux Lighting and was of such a high standard that the team has won through to the ‘Future Industry Leaders Awards’, run by EDT, which will be held at the Institution for Engineering and Technology in London next Wednesday (September 7) 2016.
The team will compete with three other schools for the national Engineering Education Scheme Award, making a presentation of their project to judges, who will then decide the national winner.
For their project the St Augustine’s team was set to design and manufacture a rig to test the durability of light fittings used by Thorlux and to measure it according to the IK rating, which is a measure of how much force a material, in this case a light fitting, can withstand without breaking.
The team explored different designs that might be possible before agreeing a design, for which a CAD drawing was produced and parts were being made to allow assembly of a working version to be tested by Thorlux engineers.
Thorlux mentor Tom Jennings said: “It was a fantastic project to be involved with from start to end and all involved with the team, St Augustine’s and Thorlux Lighting can be extremely proud of the result.
“It was great to see how all members of the team naturally took the lead on areas that suited their skill sets with the project requiring maths, physics, design, engineering, project management and presentation skills to pull it to the final result.
“It is a credit to the team how successful the project has been and Thorlux Lighting now have the means to fully impact test luminaires to a more accurate, higher level and more professional standard than their competition. The company plan to use this as a way of advertising the strength of certain luminaires and as a way to prove to potential customers just how far Thorlux goes to guarantee the quality and safety of their products.”
