HMK Exhibits at the Big Bang Fair

HMK exhibited at the Big Bang Fair in Manchester from 11th to 13th of March.  HMK wowed visitors to The Big Bang Fair by showcasing a rather innovative and exciting side to control engineering.  

Our demonstration, which was designed solely for the exhibition, showed how a naturally unstable system can be controlled.  The ‘inverted pendulum’, which is like balancing a broom stick on your finger will demonstrate to students and school children how the impossible is made possible through Control Engineering.

The students were invited to try and maintain an inverted pendulum using their own hand-eye coordination, as well as experimenting with the automatic system, for example, they can ‘tap’ it to see it recover. 

Worksheets were designed for the students to complete and a competition was run each day. HMK’s design engineers wrote the software for this live demo and which uses Parker linear motor with a Siemens drive system.   

A video of the demo can be viewed on youtube