The Engineering Education Scheme in England has, since 1984, provided young people with an insight into the world of engineering. It is part of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Best programme.

This is an invaluable experience, which enables students to make more informed career decisions through a better understanding of engineering as a profession. These students are our future engineers, scientists and technologists.

Last year we dedicated one of our engineers, Ian Dilley, to work with four students from one of the local schools in Letchworth, The Highfield School. Their project was to design, research and produce a portable workstation for use in the manufacturing environment.

This portable bench would replace the permanent benches that are rarely used thus providing more space whilst having storage facilities for traditional tools as well as modern technology including laptops and other computer systems.

The result of the project was very successful with the production of a mobile bench that included the following features
• Basic bench design mounted on heavy-duty castors to be fully portable
• Pneumatic system to allow the user to raise & lower the bench
• Fitted with electrical & air supply through a custom made plug socket set into the bench
• Drawers fitted with spring-loaded locking device
• Retractable drawing rack to hold drawings
• Locking device to allow benches to be locked together

This years project is to develop a different method of fitting rubber bushes into the prototype & pre-production subframes that we manufacture for the automotive industry. Normally there are four bushes on each frame.

These bushes are complicated components and sometimes incorporate oil pockets. They vary in size and design but there is always a problem in fitting them into the housing, as they are usually 6mm larger than the housing that we fit them into.

We currently push the bushes into the housing using cams, however this can be slow. Hydraulic cylinders are quicker but there is a lack of control, which results in bushes being damaged.