Last week, we had the opportunity to go on a two-day trip to Lossiemouth and present our work to two very different audiences; the Rolls-Royce team at RAF Lossiemouth and pupils at Hythehill Primary school!

On Monday, we had the pleasure of introducing the X-Plorer 1 and our current projects at the team of the Rolls-Royce Service Delivery Centre within RAF Lossiemouth. The unit responsible for the first line of maintenance for the Typhoon engines, the EJ200, welcomed us and following a presentation on our work, showed us around the facility, giving us the opportunity to inspect an engine up close and find out more about some of the operational and maintenance aspects of the EJ200. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the facility and we are looking forward to returning and running the X-Plorer 1 next time!

Paul Gardner (Rolls-Royce RAF Propulsion Centre) with JetX vice-president, Ross Williams.

On Tuesday, we had a great time at Hythehill Primary School where we gave a talk to 4 student groups, in order to introduce students to the various engineering careers, how to get into them and what subjects are most useful. We want to not only share our experience, given that some of us didn't leave school too long ago, address some misconceptions around the engineering profession, as well as inspire the newer generation!

Each talk was followed by a 20-minute activity during which the students were asked to form teams and tackle an engineering challenge. Making use of only 3D printed connectors and paper straws the groups had to build the tallest structure that can support a mass of up to 500g. Given finite resources, a limited amount of time and the ability to "buy" additional materials for a point loss, all groups were creative with many achieving the goal of this challenge! We were impressed by many of the structures and found it to be a very suspenseful activity when it came to applying the weight.

It was great fun interacting with the students and we hope that they learned something knew, if they are not considering becoming an engineer already! If you are a teacher and would be interested to have us during a STEM event for your school, we would be delighted to hear from you; you can get in touch using the contact form or by simply emailing us at any time.

October was an extremely busy month for all of us in JetX both internally and in terms of public engagements! In the first half of the month we finalised the new teams and the specifications for the new engines, X-Plorer 2 & Kronos.

On the 19th we had our first full team meeting for the year, which saw a full house of the largest and most diverse team to date! All members were briefed on our targets for the year, the working procedures and introduced to our new project management platform, Freedcamp.

On the 21st we took the X-Plorer 1 to the School of Engineering at the University of Glasgow for the Open Day where we had the chance to talk to many enthusiastic students and parents. We were glad to receive a lot of positive feedback which motivates us to keep inspiring the younger generation to pursue a career in STEM and engineering in particular.

On the 24th JetX was also represented at the Creative Lab opening at the School of Engineering showing an overview of the project from early design to testing. We are glad to see more spaces which enable collaboration between students being introduced and hope this is also the start of increased support for student activities.

On the 25th we were kindly invited by the Glasgow University Engineering Society (GUES) to their annual Dinner with Industry which took place at the Hilton Glasgow Grosvenor. We thoroughly enjoyed our evening and had the chance to talk to more engineering students and representatives from companies about the X-Plorer 1 and our plans for the future.

Our first ever presence in a trade fair has been a great success, as dozens of people from industry, academia and the public visited us to find out more about our work and projects!

Over three days, we displayed the first 3D-printed jet engine model to feature an integrated monitoring system at the 22nd TCT Show held at the NEC in Birmingham. The expo saw a wide range of manufacturers and suppliers come together, exhibiting new technologies, impressive 3D-prints and unveiling new potentials for cooperations.

We were delighted by the interest from the public, academics from UK universities and professionals from the additive manufacture, materials, aerospace, electronics and engineering services industries. We are looking forward to turning these contacts into partnerships in the future that will help us further advance our engine development programmes and promote our work.

Finally we would like to thank Arnold, Edgar and Dolf from Formfutura for hosting us and for giving us this fantastic opportunity to exhibit our work! It was great fun to spend three extremely busy days with the team and we hope to be back for TCT 2018!

JetX will be attending the 22nd TCT Show hosted at the NEC in Birmingham from the 26th to the 28th of September!

TCT Show is one of the world’s leading events focused on 3D manufacturing technologies and in it continues to deliver business-critical insights on 3D printing, additive manufacturing, CAD/CAE, metrology and inspection. By bringing together dozens of inspirational speakers, an expansive show floor with over 250 exhibitors, ground-breaking product launches, specialist technology tracks, a dedicated start-up zone and many more interactive show floor attractions, TCT Show continues to set the agenda for the industry.

This year we are kindly hosted by our sponsor, Formfutura. The Netherlands-based high quality filament manufacturer has been supporting our projects for almost two years and as a matter of fact, the X-Plorer 1 has been 3D-printed exclusively using Formfutura EasyFil (TM) filaments.

The X-Plorer 1 will be on-display for the duration of the show before making the journey back to Glasgow for further testing. Come down to stand E70 to check the engine, talk to team members for more information on our future plans and even get your own 3D-printed JetX keyring (while stocks last)! The show is free to attend and you can sign up by following the link below.

See you there!

Our event on the Bloodhound on Monday was a big success with students from several universities and professionals attending.

In two and a half hours, we got an insight of the Bloodhound, the manufacturing process of the fastest wheels on the planet, as well as the car's jet engine, the EJ200. 

We would like to thank John Mason from Rolls-Royce in Bristol and Roy Yuile from Castle Precision Engineering here in Glasgow for attending the event and giving two very interesting presentations. Thanks to our co-organisers, the Young Members' Panel of the IMechE and the University of Glasgow, we were able to deliver an event on cutting edge engineering and one the UK's biggest engineering challenges which was highly attended.

For future events keep an eye on jet-x.org/events or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Rolls-Royce will be represented at our upcoming event for the Bloodhound project on the 25th of January.

We will find out more for the EJ200, the engine used up until now for the Eurofighter Typhoon only. The EJ200 is the main engine of the Bloodhound, which will be supplemented by a hybrid rocket engine to push the car beyond 1000mph.

As it has already been confirmed, engineers from Castle Precision Engineering will give us a presentation on the design and manufacture of the fastest wheels on the planet!

Registration is still open at jet-x.org/events.
RSVP at our Facebook event here.