With just three weeks to go before the UK’s premier manufacturing technologies showcase kicks off, the MACH 2018 team have announced their full plans for Education and Development Zone.
The Education and Development Zone will serve as a base for student visitors, as well as housing some exciting cutting edge educational projects. Over 3500 students attended MACH 2016 and the organisers are hoping for an equally as successful show this year.
Students and their teachers can register to receive free guided tours of the MACH 2018 site, which will be led by apprentices from MTA member companies, enabling students to gain an in-depth insight into the industry. In a change to previous years, parents and guardians are also welcome to register their children (over the age of 11) as visitors and come along to see for themselves the future of manufacturing.
In the Education and Development Zone there will be an opportunity for young people to take part in exciting hands-on activities: Build your own drone; coding a robot to navigate a driverless car; designing and programming robots; immersive virtual reality environments and the chance to programme and use some of the latest machine tools.
There’s a special focus on encouraging girls into engineering at this year’s MACH including Siemen’s inspirational See Women show (13 April) and a People like Me sessions run by national charity Women in Science and Engineering.
James Selka CEO of Manufacturing Technologies Association (MTA) said “Education and Development is a massive part of what MACH 2018 is about. We know that Engineering faces a huge skills gap and in order to bridge that we need to attract new talent into the industry. We also know that manufacturing suffers from an image problem. The state of the art technology on display at MACH provides an opportunity to excite and enthuse young people and the E&D Zone can help educate them about the reality of modern manufacturing and the careers that are available for them within it.”
To register, and join the thousands of people attending the UK’s premier manufacturing technologies event this April, just follow this link.
Notes
Autodesk:
Build, Program and Fly a Drone!
Students will have the opportunity to build, programme and fly their own drone! This forms part of a brand-new STEM competition and with curriculum materials for school. The workshop at MACH will be exclusive to MACH and the first student workshop for Airgineers in the UK. Learn the fundamental principles of drones, students will use the Airgineers drone kit and build a quadcopter.
Bloodhound SSC
BLOODHOUND Education team will inspire your students with our hands-on activities based around our project to build the world’s first 1,000mph car – BLOODHOUND SSC.
Siemens:
Siemens will feature their new driverless car resource, where students must correctly code a Micro:Bit robot to follow the correct route and navigate through a city along increasingly complex routes. Students are given all 3 codes but do not know which code is correct for each track. Students will choose a robot, choose a code, write out the code using the Micro:Bit blox software, and then test to see if the code they have programmed was correct as their robots ‘drive’ along the mat.
VEX Robotics
VEX Robotics will have two different robotics activities for students, involving design, programming and teamwork. In one challenge, groups will design elements of a robot and the teams will face off against each other with opportunities to re-work their designs between matches. Apprentices from the Advanced Manufacturing Training Centre will be assisting students with this challenge throughout the week.
ABB Robotics
Students can visit ABB Robotics’ activity and enter the zone of virtual reality. Open to all ages, students can immerse themselves into our RobotStudio off-line programming software where they will have approximately 3 minutes each to guide a six axis robot around obstacles by altering its course. The student that finishes the quickest over the five days of the show will receive a prize. Apprentices from the Advanced Manufacturing Training Centre will be assisting students with this challenge throughout the week.
Yamazaki Mazak
Yamazaki Mazak will have six Smooth Controllers for students to use. Students will be shown how to program a basic shape and then will be allowed to have a go themselves.
DMG Mori
Apprentices and World Skills finalists will be on hand to demonstrate DMG Mori’s CMX800V and CTX450 machines to groups of students.
SeeWomen
Siemens will also host a SeeWomen show on Friday 13 April, with live science and engineering demonstrations aimed to inspire young women into careers in science and engineering. The Siemens Education SeeWomen project aims to inspire and motivate young girls to pursue STEM careers and challenge gender stereotypes. The project has been created especially for girls, to place the spotlight on modern STEM female role models in Siemens and beyond. The interactive, curriculum-linked stage show explores modern women’s ground breaking contributions to science, technology and engineering, taking the audience on a journey into the world of STEM with captivating live stage experiments. The show aims to excite the audience with thought-provoking activities to build their confidence and motivate them to set future goals and raise their aspirations.
People Like Me
Women in Science and Engineering will host a People like Me session on Wednesday 11 April. People Like Me aims to support recruitment of girls into STEM subjects post-16, particularly those that girls typically do not choose such as physics and engineering. Currently physics is the third most popular A-level for boys but only the nineteenth for girls, and of 14,000 engineering apprentices, only 450 were girls. Failing to recruit girls into these areas is not only limiting for the girls (as they miss out on great careers in exciting areas) but also represents a real threat to the UK economy. People Like Me helps to address the lack of girls in these areas by showing the girls that people with similar personality traits and aptitudes are happy and successful working in STEM.
