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“Here you mount the motor now. Make sure it sits straight and doesn’t wobble.” Yesterday, apprentice Paul Hofer explained step by step to the two visitors Flora and Katharina how to assemble their first robot. As part of the children’s university in Hagenberg, the girls spent half a day with the mechanical engineering company Engel in Schwertberg and learned a lot about how large machines work in general and about injection molding technology in particular. How hot does the granulate get before it is shaped, and how much electricity is actually required to produce it? The 20 young researchers had these and other questions with them so that they could be answered on the factory tour.
To get started, a few Frisbees were produced under the guidance of plastics technician Oliver Reichhart – he successfully completed his apprenticeship last week. Then Engel training manager Werner Wurm led the children’s university participants through the assembly hall: “All the machines you see here have already been sold and are being prepared for transport to the customers. At peak times we produce 60 machines here a week.” In the training workshop, the children were then allowed to lend a hand with pliers, files and cable ties and assemble simple robots in order to have them compete against each other in a race at the end. During lunch together, the course of the race was hotly discussed.
The globally active mechanical engineering group Engel has been a partner of this holiday facility since the early days of the KinderUni. “We would like to give the children and young people an insight into the fascination of a technical profession,” says training manager Wurm. Wurm and his team are currently preparing for the arrival of the new apprentices on September 1st, “so that they can get started right away on the first day”.
Source: Nachrichten
