Engineering Practical Exam

partyatmygaff

When is yours going to take place? In our school it's going to be either on the 11th or the 12th of May. Still not quite sure.

So far, of the parts that I need to prepare beforehand i've managed to get the aluminium and polycarbonate stock cut down but I still have to cut and finish the two brass stock pieces. I've got most of the mild steel done but I still need to do some finishing work (Filing those radiused internal and external corners are a nightmare in mild steel).I've got the CNC programs ready to go for the turned pieces but I still haven't actually machined the pieces yet...

Is there anyone doing the exam the first week after Easter?

partyatmygaff

Did anyone have the exam today? How did it go for you?

enaeknala1

Supposed to have mine 2moro.........Broke my wrist in a car crash yesterday..:(

partyatmygaff

enaeknala1 wrote: »

Supposed to have mine 2moro.........Broke my wrist in a car crash yesterday..:(

Are you going to have to do the test? Surely it'll be postponed? They can't expect you to do a practical exam with a broken wrist.

enaeknala1

Can delay it but only till end of may.. Still gonna be n a cast for it!

Bbbbolger

Sorry to hear that mate. Put it into perspective though...things could have been a lot worse!

TommyJoe15

Had mine on friday, not too bad really..2 trick enough brass pieces but they arn't too bad really, figuring out the assembly is a bit tricky too, time shouldnt be an issue. I had all my pieces done with 2 hours to spare and spent them draw liling and polishing

partyatmygaff

Half my class did theirs today. Apparently only 3 of them actually managed to finish it =\

partyatmygaff

Did mine today...

I feel smashed. The aluminium and polycarbonate pieces were fairly nice. Nothing too difficult.

The two brass pieces however were pure evil :pac: Particularly the smaller of the two brass pieces. A nightmare to mark out but once I had that done it wasn't too hard to fabricate.

All in all, I finished with about 40 minutes to spare and spent those polishing the moving parts and working on the appearance of the piece. I would have finished earlier but I had to restart my polycarbonate piece halfway through after realising I made a serious error while marking out. The only real issue with my piece was that the brass "plunger" that moves in and out of the mild steel piece was a bit too small. Annoying but it's not the worst of errors.

Now i'm off to sleep...

Digits

Yeah I done this today, it was fine. I dont know what people get so worked up over it about. Most of us were on our last piece by the time the break came and we spent like the last hour and a half polishing...haha. I'm fairly happy with it overall. Just keep working away and measure everything twice at least.

Ciano35

Had mine yesterday, was hoping to do fairly well in it, but it doesn't work properly and hadn't enough time to sort it out sickening.

partyatmygaff

Ciano35 wrote: »

Had mine yesterday, was hoping to do fairly well in it, but it doesn't work properly and hadn't enough time to sort it out sickening.

Sorry to hear that. Where was the fault? If it was only one part that caused it to not work then you won't lose too many marks. Did it move at all?

Ciano35

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Sorry to hear that. Where was the fault? If it was only one part that caused it to not work then you won't lose too many marks. Did it move at all?

Cheers, it turns about halfway, locks up and if its forced to move more the brass valve thing pops up and needs to be forced back in again

partyatmygaff

That sounds as if you drilled one of the holes in the polycarbonate piece at an angle. If so, you won't lose a huge amount of marks providing the other parts were ok.

Ciano35

Yeah everything else was fine, so here's hoping!