Foundation Apprentices visit Hendry Hydraulics
Our Engineering Foundation Apprentices recently visited Hendry Hydraulics to gain an insight into the world of engineering and to get a look at their Co-ordinate Measurement Machine.
As part of our Foundation Apprenticeship in Engineering, we are engaged in an ongoing project with Johnstons of Elgin to reverse engineer one of their older sewing machines, important to the traditional and heritage aspects of their business. One particular part of the sewing machine we are working on is very difficult to measure and model, so we reached out to Hendry Hydraulics for help.
Lecturer, Paul Harlow, who had previously seen a demonstration of the Co-ordinate Measurement Machine which they use for quality control of the components they manufacture, thought it might be possible to do the same thing for the sewing machine. Reaching out to Aimee Stephen of DYW Moray, he made contact with Simon Hart, the quality manager at Hendry Hydraulics, who not only agreed to help, but also invited the entire Foundation Apprentice student group to the Elgin site for a guided tour.
The tour was extremely interesting and very well managed by Simon, who gave the students both an informative presentation on the company business and a very thorough guided tour of the manufacturing facility. The students were all very surprised to be shown such high-tech manufacturing taking place so close to home; the degree of automation, robotics and computer-control they were shown made them realise that the engineering industry is far more technically advanced than they imagined. Simon also gave the students a very honest insight into the world of work and gave frank answers to their questions, which was of equal value to the tour itself.
A huge thank you to both Simon and Aimee for their help in arranging this.