I did my fourth-year industrial placement at FastBlade as part of my MEng Mechanical and Electrical Engineering degree. I worked as a Research Engineer alongside the Experimental Officer and was involved in great variety of projects, from programming and research to mechanical design and manual fabrication.

I worked on the commissioning of new servo-actuators for testing, designing the swivel base and the elevated support structure. I was involved in strategy formulation for upcoming blade test and explored mechanical design options for the blade and actuator test setup, accounting for cost, ease of assembly, material availability and system compatibility.

I made extensive use of MATLAB for variety of problems. I created a program to assess the theoretical equivalent damage done to a blade during fatigue testing based on the loading data; a program to fix an incorrect actuator-positioning calculator; and an improved random speckle pattern generator.

I set up a 3D printing station at FastBlade and led the modelling and prototyping of functional and aesthetic components from variety of materials, generating a substantial collection. FastBlade was a great place for hands-on learning where I could really feel the value of my contribution.