Some Macclesfield Sixth Formers have designed an interactive hockey stick to win the National Award for Innovation in the prestigious Engineering Education Scheme.

The King's School team of Year 12 students has been working over the last six months under the mentorship of local professional, OPUS Technical Director John Blackwell, to produce a revolutionary new sports training aid.

Mr Blackwell, who is of the Macclesfield company located on Melville House, Queen's Ave, advised the innovative teenage designers of the future. But the work is fully by the six pupils of The King's School.

Working remotely under strict COVID rules, the imaginative young designers produced a prototype and an 80-page report detailing their advances to impress a panel of some of the nation's most creative engineering minds. And it worked.

Using a Bluetooth technology and a microcomputer, materials science and computerised data gathering and analysis, the brilliant 17 and 18-year-olds now have a product that could be developed in the competitive industry of global design.

Tutored by Dr Stephen Hartnett, King's Head of Physics, the team first had to come up with an original idea.

Student and Team Leader Alex McCall, who hopes to be a computer scientist, said: "It was first brainstormed in discussions with Mr Blackwell before we took the idea to the Hockey Department."

It continues a long tradition of industry-leading success for the 519-year-old school.

Team member Abi Breese-Tovey said: "The concept centred on negative reinforcement, getting the stick to make a noise if it was held incorrectly. We also wanted to send information from the stick to an app on the coaches' phones detailing how hard the ball was being hit according to each type of stroke."

Student Emma Graham added "This meant that we needed to fit an Accelerometer sensor and to use conductive paint as well as Bluetooth communication."

Max Parks Szymborski who then produced a design on 3D CAD software, added: "it was essential to go back and forth between our team and the hockey department to fine tune the process."

It took the students six-months to complete the project, in which the school was teaching completely virtually for half that time during lockdown.

Aidan Ling, another young software specialist, added: "Mr Blackwell really helped us to advance our ideas and maximise the benefits of the software."

Their teacher, Dr Stephen Hartnett, who also oversaw sixth formers win the same award in 2019, said: "It has been a pleasure to work with these outstanding students who will, I am sure all have very successful careers in STEM. King's again competed at the very highest level against schools from across the whole of England."

You can find more about physics at King's School via this link

John Blackwell, whose Macclesfield-based company Opus Technical Ltd has over 45 years in the design and manufacture of a wide range of equipment and services for the Process Engineering Industry, said: "This year in particular has been very hard with the lockdown, but the students worked harder and were more focused and organised that ever before, embracing new technologies to collaborate online and offline, learning new skills to prototype their design and finding the time to manage the project when they could not meet up face to face.

"As a country, we have a history of pioneering and innovative engineers and King's Physics department, led by Dr Hartnett, is introducing and inspiring new students to be tomorrow's great British engineers."

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