• Question: What is the most dangerous thing you've made?

    Asked by TheBritishBoy to Adam, Eloise, Iona, Jarrod, Yip on 11 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Adam Drake

      Adam Drake answered on 11 Jun 2016:

      A killer robot.

    • Photo: Iona Strawson

      Iona Strawson answered on 12 Jun 2016:

      We make machines that operate in explosive atmospheres, so I guess the whole machine is dangerous. If we haven’t designed it right, to prevent a spark igniting in a dusty environment, then the whole place could go up! It is a real danger for companies processing food like wheat.

    • Photo: Jarrod Hart

      Jarrod Hart answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      I had to figure out a way to melt tiny particles of rock-dust so they would become spherical – and to do it I built an oxy-propane ‘flame thrower’, which I aimed into a drum as I droped the dust in – I used a big hoover to suck the smoke and dust through a long pipe (for cooling) then collected it in a cyclone (like the ones on a Dyson Hoover but much bigger).

      Sometimes the flames would travel back up the gas pipe and there’d be a collossal ‘bang’ – called blow-back – luckily we designed the gas pipes to prevent these explosions from being anything more than a loud noise – though I admit, after running this machine a while, people would all cheer when I left for the day!

Comments