By Meher G, Year 12

Over the course of the last few months, a team of seven Year 12s from NHEHS: Meher, Daisy, Guusje, Olivia, Anna, Elizabeth and Giuliana have been researching and working on the EDT Industrial Cadets Gold Award, an engineering project designed to provide students with hands-on experience in solving real-world STEM engineering challenges.

We were partnered with our mentor, Jake, the principal project manager for 3P innovation, and with him we have been designing and modelling a low-cost precision powder feeder capable of dispensing doses of 50–300 mg. This project requires us to research pharmaceutical drugs and their normal doses given, which type of dosing method works the most efficiently and how to effectively model a powder doser that later could be 3D printed and manufactured. We eventually decided to model our design using the auger dosing method.

On the 7th and 8th of January this year, we visited UCL’s MechSpace Workshops where we had the facilities to model and 3D print our first design, whilst others focused on the research behind the powder feeder and what drugs can be used with it, all written in an electronic report. Throughout the two days, we were able to speak to undergraduate engineering students about their experience studying mechanical engineering at university and were given a tour of projects made by a range of students, like an F1 model car. One of the highlights of this tour was being able to sit in a car designed by students which uses less energy than humans use to live and can travel great distances with such little energy!

By the end of the two days we had finished 3D printing our first design of our doser and completed all the research behind it!

We are so grateful for this opportunity! Thank you to Mr Lawrence, Jake and all the UCL students for helping us reach this stage of development!