Bosch Rexroth has co-sponsored The Institution of Agricultural Engineers (IAgrE) annual ‘Young Engineer’ Competition. The 2007 event was held at the CNH tractor plant in Basildon, Essex during March with several agricultural colleges taking part and the students incorporating the competition as part of their studies.
Bosch Rexroth’s Mobile Hydraulics business unit put up £1200 worth of Bosch power tools as prizes with the winning college getting £600 worth of tools. The other co-sponsor was Autoguide Equipment who supplied some cash prizes and the ramp which was an integral part of the competition.
The competition itself requires the students to design and build a battery powered vehicle to climb a ramp with an ever increasing gradient (similar to a skateboard quarter pipe).
The winner is the vehicle that manages to climb highest up the ramp. Four colleges took part, Myerscough College from Preston; Reaseheath College from Nantwich; Plumpton College from Sussex and Melton Brooksby College from Melton Mowbray. 15 vehicles were entered from the four colleges and the first part of the competition was for the vehicle to pass inspection.
The rules of the competition are simple and straightforward. The vehicle is to be no bigger than 320mm x 200mm, it must be powered by a 6V battery (supplied) and it must use the four wheels provided. Plus, all tractive effort must be supplied through the wheels.
Interestingly, there is also a category for non-conforming vehicles in order to encourage the students to ‘think outside of the box’. In this category were a caterpillar tracked vehicle with a grappling hook to pull it up the ramp and a two wheel ‘hopping’ vehicle.
The ramp itself is made from curved hardboard peg board with a tape measure up one side and a laser beam showing the mark across the ramp. The teams were asked where they wanted the mark placed and the vehicle then had to climb the ramp and break the beam.The rules are similar to high jump competitions where the teams are allowed 3 attempts at the initial height of their choosing and once successful they can choose the next height, up to a maximum of three heights.
At this point the students found there were some important tactical choices to be made in either heading directly up the slope or at an angle across it.
The vehicles varied massively in their design, some were small and direct drive with massive amounts of acceleration whilst others were slow with high torques driven by an array of windscreen wiper motors, electric window motors, bike chains, rubber bands etc. There were 2 wheel, 3 wheel and 4 wheel vehicles and even an articulated one.
After a morning of frenzied activity on the ramp, although much of the activity took place in the ‘pits’ as teams frantically modified vehicles after seeing the experiences of their competitors – the judges retired to consult and finally came up with a winner.
In third place was Trotters Independent Traders from Plumpton who won £200 worth of Bosch power tools for their college, in second was Turbo Division from Reaseheath College who won £400 of Bosch power tools and the winner was Mech-la-Maniacs from Myerscough College who won £600 worth of power tools.
For more information about the competition and details of how to enter next year go to: www.iagre.org