Representatives from Kemnay Academy Young Engineers Club went to the Glasgow Science Centre on the 8 June to participate in a “Celebration of Engineering and Science”.  This event hosted many YE teams from all over Scotland.

Each team had a display of their projects.  Judges evaluated teamwork, presentation and challenge presented in the projects.  Kemnay Academy’s young engineers had a submersible ROV which came third in the MATEROV competition in March, a Makerbot 3D printer that was given to the school be the Scottish Council for Development and Industry to promote new technology in schools and a Rampaging Chariot that is one of two that Kemnay Academy YE have built.

The ROV is made up of plastic pipes for its chassis and has attached tools, propellers and camera’s to make it operational.  It is controlled via a control box.  The Makerbot uses melted plastic to build up layers when it is printing 3D objects and receives its instructions from a program on a laptop that is used to input the objects dimensions.  The rampaging chariot uses two handheld drills to power the wheels and a remote control to operate it.

We had to depart from Kemnay at around 6.00am to arrive at the Glasgow Science Centre and set up our projects ready for judging at 10am.  When the judges arrived we showed them our projects and provided them with a good presentation.  As part of the event companies and universities provided a competition based on mini challenges.  We did six 3min problem solving challenges such as controlling pumps and valves to pump a liquid into a cylinder and building up deep sea pipes that were made up by oil companies like Shell.  We had our lunch and then headed off to the IMAX theatre for the awards ceremony.  Our Makerbot won a prize for the most interesting shape prize.  After the awards ceremony we headed home and discussed ideas to improve our projects further.  From the young engineers club we have all gained teamwork skills and improved our problem solving when it comes to engineering new things.

Martin Thomson S5

Well done to all involved 🙂