8th June

This is the final day within the workshop for preparation and finalising our final printed design, making sure everything is perfect. We have added an industrial seal to the pump to (hopefully) insure that leakage will be at a minimum at the competition. We have also printed off extra components to avoid leakage (shown in the photos below). Today Calum is finishing his last parts of the presentation and we are making sure everything is ready for leaving tomorrow with the competition being on Friday.

7th June

Within this last week we were putting the finishing touches to our product and presentation. Making sure they are up to scratch for the winning slot. All the parts needed have been printed and we are just making sure there will not be any leakage on Friday. We are testing our final design today to see how efficient our product is. Calum is finishing an, ‘Adobe Voice,’ presentation for the competition. Marc is overseeing construction of the water pump and making any last adjustments that are needed. Amy is making a vinyl decoration for the outside of the case to make the product more aesthetically pleasing and stand out from the other pumps.Below are photos of us finally testing the pump!!!!

6th June

After a nervous weekend where we waited to see if the last part of the pump had printed successfully on Friday afternoon, we were delighted that it had worked! We could then make a start on our final assembly and filing down some of the different components to ensure they fitted properly. Our next step is to insert the drive shaft and test out how it actually runs! We also received the test plate from Strathclyde Uni so that we will be able to attach our pump before we make the trip down to Glasgow. Not long to go now!

3rd June

This week we have been busy finalising the design for our water pump. We have had a few technical hitches, to say the least, but fingers crossed we are now back on track!

The last piece of the pump assembly is being printed and we have started preparing a drive shaft to attach to the motor.

The next step is to attach the final assembly to the test bed which is on its way to us from Strathclyde Uni.

We also spotted that the power supply we borrowed from Science was made by Weir!

27th May

As we are gradually finishing exams and all starting to finish school (with our last event together as a year group tonight: PROM!) we have decided to focus on the Weir group project and test our motor. Which can be seen in the below photos testing it with a basic impeller. We our now printing our final design, making sure it is accurate to what we believe will be the winning impeller. Also during this time we are perfecting our presentation for the final competition on June 10th.

16th May

On the 16th of May, the weir group had a road trip to Foyers Hydro-Electric power station. Where we were shown around the power station lead by Peter Gilmour, we learned interesting details and facts about the power station and dam (which is situated in Loch Mhor).This made the group more knowledgeable on how pumps on a large scale can work. 100 cubic metres of water pass through each of two huge turbine generators during generation giving a total capacity of over 300MW. Also 200 cubic metres per second of water or 200 tonnes per second is passed into Loch Ness. Helping us realise how to make our pump more reliable and efficient. Learning how to make the water reach its optimum speed and height.

Included in these picture are the weir group with our guides, a 3D printed valve, the hydros shaft, the pumps it has, the control room and where the pipes and the hyrdo station is.

21st April

We have all enjoyed a refreshing Easter break and we are ready to work as hard as ever. To begin with Marc has been testing the 3D printer but found out that we had another problem as the plastic had become blocked. He is in the process of fixing the 3D printer once again, so we can continue printing our test and final impellers. James is creating potential presentation ideas for the competition, using the design brief and guidelines to figure out what the presentation should involve. Amy is designing the weir group t-shirts that we have decided to wear to the competition. Sebastion and Ruaridh are creating orthographic drawings to show what the size of our final design will look like. Sadly we are missing our team member Calum, as he is away for a rugby game (boo).

 

21st March

Today we 3D printed a test impeller to so we could experiment with different methods for removing a raft and hooking up to the motor. Here is the model being printed befire we took it to the workshop to try out different tools and machinery.

17th March

After the success of getting the 3D printer to finally start working, we have been experiencing a number of issues with the models we are printing. We decided to print a few different types of models to test different aspects of 3D printing (holes, over-hangs, curved edges etc). Some issues that have arisen is the fact that the plastic we are printing is ‘warping’ which means it is curving in specific areas where we don’t want it to curve!

As for other progression with the project, Ruaridh and Sebastian have begun remodelling the initial CAD model of the impeller with some pointers made by Peter Lilleyman. Amy, Chloe and James are beginning the presentation and are looking into team t-shirts. Marc has obtained a power supply from the Science department and has tested the motor, which looks very promising.

Above is the full Weir Group with Mrs Sharkey and Mrs Woodcraft