Edward
Rowing boat spanner holder
Wellington College
Year 13 Materials Technology
Teacher: Matthew Lane
As school's rowing captain, Edward was inspired to do a project based on rowing. After brainstorming a variety of potential needs and opportunities with the Star Boating Club committee, he decided to design and produce a holder to secure to rowing boats the two different-sized spanners required when rigging and de-rigging.
He took his idea to his group in the Business Studies class and they set up a business - Innovative Rowing Equipment - with the spanner holder as the main product.
Edward worked on concept drawings of various types of holders, ranging from the use of clips, to fixing it in the boat, to pouches. He decided that clipping the holders in would involve too much handling and that pouches could be dropped overboard, so he concentrated on some form of fixed plastic holding device as the solution.
He next had to consider how to attach it. The holder would have to be fastened to the side or bottom of the boat, either temporarily with something like Velcro (enabling removal) or permanently, using an industrial double-sided tape that was already in use in the cox box.
Using foam moulds so that the full design scale could be seen, Edward came up with different types of designs, working through the various problems. After two unsuccessful attempts, Edward was successful with his third. He did about 20 computer-aided designs (CADs) and full CAD drawings with the complete dimensions of the device, which would save the company about $8,000 when he moved on to the injection moulding process.
From the CAD design Edward made moulds for the plastic resin prototypes, and experimented with inserting magnets to prevent the spanners moving around. At this point, Innovative Rowing Equipment received outside investment of approximately $12,000, enabling them to order 1,000 injection moulded units from a Hutt Valley firm, a contact organised with the help of the Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Scheme.
Edward received comments from other stakeholders such as his business partners and other club rowers, and says it was good to get negative feedback as this meant he could get working as perfect as it could be.
This resulted in a truly saleable prototype, reflected in the fact that the New Zealand Rowing Institute has ordered Edward's spanner holder for use in their boats.
"The whole experience has been great," Edward
says. "It's a long-term thing – a business that will
keep on growing. "I've loved doing technology,
and working with clients is great, it lets me tap in
to my innovative side. Rather than reading out of a
text book I'm picking up knowledge, experiencing
new things and having fun. I can use all this later
in life, it's a great path to glorious things".
Edward is now on a gap year in the UK and then
plans to do industrial design, or something similar,
at university.
Related links: Size is no object case study
