Category Archives: Product Design

Bedales in the Greenpower International Finals

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By Alex McNaughton, Head of Faculty: Art & Design

On Sunday 8 October, Bedales qualified to compete in the Greenpower International Finals 2023 at Goodwood Motor Circuit. This was quite something; racing on one of the most iconic tracks in the world, with clear skies against 90+ other cars, the day was set to be one to remember. Our place in the finals had been achieved by our consistent performance in the Goodwood and Castle Combe heats earlier in the year.

The Bedales Greenpower project is going from strength to strength; we have a great group of regular attendees at our weekly sessions and have a real thirst to do better each time we race. We are aiming towards fielding an additional car for the next season – watch this space for future developments.

Here, two Bedales Greenpower team members reflect on their experience in the finals.

By Elliot Cundy, Block 5 and Max Galgey, Block 4

The first event of the day was open practice; 70 minutes in which we could run our car non-competitively to check everything was running as it should be, practice our race strategy, see how our lap times compared to the rest of the grid, and give a few of our new drivers some all-important practice behind the wheel.

Thankfully the car ran without any issues, and our race strategy was proving effective; the use of a pit board enabled us to communicate with the driver as to how much throttle to use, allowing us to pace the car for the optimal balance between performance and efficiency so as to not run out of power (as has been a problem in previous races). As the practice session came to an end, we swiftly swapped the car’s batteries to a fresh fully charged set and lined up on the grid for the first race, the results of which would decide our grid position for the second.

The first race went according to plan, with the four drivers all completing three laps, and setting good times for our finishing position. The first driver came into the pitlane after a very good stint. We had a good pitstop that held our position, and out the second driver went. A very close call on the start straight, when another car illegally blocked us. The car was unscathed, and we kept going, the next few pitstops went well. All the drivers in the second race drove very well and gave us a qualifying position on 50th.

Heading into the second race, we qualified 50th out of 92 with a strong mindset and a clear strategy, calculated from previous results in an Excel spreadsheet. At the race start we swiftly moved up through the field at a steady but strong pace. We completed five laps before heading into the pitlane where the next driver was waiting. With a decent pitstop, we were back out onto the track. In the pitlane, we had lost a few positions, but we kept going strong.

On the second lap of the second stint, the driver clocked a new Goodwood team best of a five-minute and 10-second time. The next lap had a bit of confusion, letting the driver go 100% for another lap, a mistake that would later affect the car’s performance. The driver then pulled into the pits a few laps later, where the team completed a new fastest pit stop of around five seconds.

Out went the last driver, going as fast as he wanted to finish the race. Heading onto the final lap the car started to run low on power, but thankfully the car kept going. While heading into the final corner, the car’s speed dropped significantly and it rolled across the line to finish 18th of 52 in class and 48th of 92 overall.

Since last year’s finals, the Bedales Greenpower team have been working hard each week to fit a variety of upgrades and make modifications to the car, including new cooling inlets, aerodynamic vacuum-formed wheel covers and a custom-made telemetry system. Alongside this, we are currently in the process of designing a new car, completely from scratch. It was therefore very useful to get the chance to talk to the different teams at the race about what aspects have and haven’t worked for them and to take inspiration from their designs. 

Bedales launches Greenpower team

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By Alex McNaughton, Head of Product Design

Thanks to the generosity of the Bedales Parents’ Association (BPA), this year the Design department has brought the Greenpower Competition – a significant and highly competitive design and engineering competition for secondary schools – to Bedales.
 
The Greenpower Education Trust is a UK based charity which gets young people enthusiastic about science and engineering by challenging them to design, build and race an electric car. Established in 1999, Greenpower now work with 300 schools, with around 500 teams participating in the competition’s classes: Formula Goblin (for children aged 9-11); Formula 24 (for children aged 11-16); and Formula 24+ (for young people aged 16-25). 
 
As a number of Bedales students from Block 3 to 6.2 have a keen interest, aptitude and sympathy for design, technology and engineering, many of whom have previously expressed a desire to take part in the competition, we saw an opportunity to launch a Greenpower team – initially in the Formula 24 category – for a group of students to work throughout the year to build and improve a vehicle to race at nationally organised events, which are hosted at top race circuits such as Goodwood, Dunsfold, Castle Combe and Rockingham.
 
Our Greenpower team is open to anyone in school who wishes to participate – students and staff alike. As well as offering a practical outlet for students who have either not chosen or been able to choose to study Design, it gives students who are going on to study an engineering discipline at university a fantastic way to bolster their UCAS application and CV. The project also promotes cross-curricular collaboration, with the Physics department contributing time and expertise.


 
To get the team up and running, the BPA kindly funded cost of a complete kit to build a functioning vehicle, bodywork and battery charger for the vehicle, specialist tools and safety clothing for drivers and pit crew. This year we are learning many valuable lessons by rebuilding and improving a second hand kit car. Our long-term plan is to build a car from scratch to compete annually, continually improve our vehicles to make them more efficient and highly competitive. 
 
We currently have a team of 12 eager and motivated students from every year group who meet each week to build and develop our car for the 2022 season. The first race is in April which we are on course to compete in. 
 
The Greenpower Competition is fundamentally about producing an energy efficient electric car. It is ideally placed to promote and practically demonstrate the increasingly important and prominent issues of sustainability and the vital role of technology within this field.

Professionally mentored Design project

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By Huxley Green, 6.1

6.1 Product Design students have been continuing with the first full project of their A Level studies: designing a learning space to be placed somewhere on the school grounds. This project was to be inspired by a notable designer and feature the use of two particular materials; each student was allocated a different designer and combination of materials. We were then asked to come up with conceptual ideas to be expanded upon at a later date. These would be represented by research and design work in our sketchbooks, a scale model and a CAD model using SolidWorks. Final presentation boards were presented to Old Bedalian Patrick Lewis, a practising architect based in London who is running the project alongside Bedales Head of Product Design Alex McNaughton.

Unfortunately, as we re-entered lockdown in January, most students have been unable to continue their model-making at home, so this has been delayed until later in the year. However, it was possible for us to continue our projects using Adobe InDesign and Photoshop along with SolidWorks from home on their own computers. In-house video tutorials aided us in progressing independently alongside our online classes and one-to-one instruction.

These sessions allowed us to create a wide range of impressive presentation boards, which were presented to Patrick. We each had a window of time to talk Patrick and Alex through our final design at the online group critique presentation session on 28 January, before we received feedback from Patrick about how we could continue and improve our projects.

My project was to combine the beautiful campus and the high-quality Music and Drama of Bedales into a missing element; an outdoor stage inspired by Charles and Ray Eames (my allocated designers), using concrete and plywood (my allocated materials). Other projects included quiet reading areas, sensory learning spaces for Dunannie, social areas and a library/café.

Patrick seemed to be impressed by a scope of designs produced by 6.1 students and we hope to be able to present our evolved and developed ideas, a scale model, and revised and improved presentation boards to Patrick in person later in the year.

Product Design students visit plastics manufacturer

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By Max Lobbenberg, 6.2 and Product Design Don

On 21 November, the 6.2 Product Design class visited Broanmain Ltd, a specialist technical plastics moulder. Broanmain is a family-owned company, which has been operating for over 60 years. They support a wide range of industries from aerospace, electronics and defence to the science sector and consumer goods.

After a presentation on how the injection moulding machines work, Broanmain’s Operations Director, Jo Davis, and Production Manager, Thomas Catinat, showed us around their factory.

Whilst the core of their business is focused on producing injection moulded polymer components, they are one of only 15 companies in the UK to operate specialist thermoset compressive moulding machines. The key difference with these to the usual thermoplastics is that the material is not re-mouldable, and is therefore non-recyclable.

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