• Question: What was your favourite piece of engineering

    Asked by MichaelW on 16 Mar 2021.
    • Photo: Sarah-Jane Potts

      Sarah-Jane Potts answered on 16 Mar 2021:

      The favourite thing I’ve designed? Probably a miniture screen printer I designed and made during my doctorate that could be used with a high speed imaging camera to assess exactly how ink flows through the mesh and separates during screen printing. It might sound odd, but the way that the ink flowed and spereated was something that had never been seen and had scientific theories dating back to the 1980’s which had never been proved or disproved before my screen printing visualiser was made. It took four designs and two prototypes before I reached the working thing and I was so excited when it worked at many people didn’t think it would.

    • Photo: Lia Bucks

      Lia Bucks answered on 18 Mar 2021:

      My favourite piece of engineering (not something I have done) doesn’t sound cool, but makes my life so much easier – the good old washing machine! Common household machines are often overlooked as engineered items but they are developed by engineers and are constantly evolving and improving. Think of Dyson and some of the new technologies they are employing in their hoovers and fans which make them more compact, more powerful and more energy efficient. Great engineering!

    • Photo: Emma Robertson

      Emma Robertson answered on 23 Mar 2021:

      A very good question! My favourite thing I have worked on (and probably one of my favourite overall pieces of engineering) is our 3D printing machines – they are very complex and it is satisfying seeing all of the systems inside the printer work together to create a part. Our type of 3D printer uses a process called powder bed fusion, and there are also many other types of 3D printing process that are different but also ‘print’ parts.

    • Photo: Kiri Hatton

      Kiri Hatton answered on 24 Mar 2021:

      Probably my favourite is La Sagrada Familia – the cathederal in Barcelona that is still unfinished because the design is so complex, it is taking a very long time to build. When you visit you can learn about the engineering tricks that have been used to build the structure, lots of these techniques are built on the mathematics found in nature. Its amazing.

    • Photo: Anna Garcia-Teruel

      Anna Garcia-Teruel answered on 26 Mar 2021:

      My favourite piece of engineering is maybe…the computer? It has allowed us to do SO many things!
      I am also always amazed with rockets, stallites and this types of machines that take a REALLY long time and large effort to develop, and that you cannot test in advance. You just need to make the best you can to make sure they work as you imagine. So I was super excited to see the Mars rover landing recently. I think it is amazing that they could get something like that to work exactly as they expected when in engineering as a general rule things NEVER work the first time.

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