The last week of November saw us host a young student from Didcot Girls’ School, who is interested in Engineering and was keen to learn more about modern methods of construction.

We set up a 3-day work experience placement for her with our maintenance team, where she developed a brief understanding of what it takes to keep the factory running, to understand legislative compliance and learn how we work to keep people safe.

The student, Sapphira, was able to get hands-on with our new 3D printer where she printed out one of our own designs for a guide bracket, which is used to support our handheld printers in Production to mark the panels with their job, plot and panel information.

Following this we let her loose with her own idea, where she printed a mobile phone holder in the shape of Captain America’s shield.

Using her shield as an example we then taught her about Continuous Improvement methodology by looking at how we can take a design and add in additional colours when printing to better match the real shield.  Further improvement ideas included mounting a wireless charger discreetly behind the shield, so that the phone holder becomes a charger. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to implement this as an idea but Sapphira now has a future project if she chooses to come back again next year.

Although the placement was for just 3 days Sapphira’s feedback was that she absolutely loved her time with us and that she’d like to come back again next year for a full two weeks placement – and we look forward to welcoming her back.