Considering it’s been some time since I last wrote and I feel like I’ve not actually been doing much since I last wrote but I’ve actually been flat out with lots of little side projects that seem to end up occupying all my time. I think I’ve told most of you that I’ve been busy designing a new kind of underwater hockey stick with two of my friends from hockey, well I thought I’d show you some pictures of what we’ve done so far. I’ve designed most of it on computer based on a stick that one of the guys uses and makes for other people already. Our main point of difference is that we’re using two types of plastic to improve the player’s control of the puck, something that most plastic sticks don’t do very well. No-one has done this before se we’re learning all the time, so far it’s moving in the right direction, the CAD work has taken up a lot of my time over the last few months and I’m looking forward to getting it finished!
You can see the two different materials best in the CAD picture, there is only a slight difference in colour on the actual prototype.
Another little side project I’m working on is to come up with ideas for Evelien’s family bach, we’re off to stay there this weekend to suss it out and come up with ideas to beat her parents and brothers in a little family competition they’ve got going.
Every year there are a several Ocean Swims organised around Auckland and I’ve decided to enter one or two of them, starting in November with The Harbour Swim from one side of Auckland’s harbour to the other which is 2.6km (just over a mile and a half). I’m going to have to get back into some lane swimming to top up my water fitness first but I thin they’ll be a good challenge for me this summer.
The weather here over winter has been pretty naff. It’s not been too cold except for a very cold snap in June, it’s just been very wet, we’ve had two cyclone’s move through in the last month and are set for another storm this weekend. It’s given me the opportunity to do a lot of work on the hockey stick but I’d rather be getting out and about. Petrol prices have finally dropped again to just below $2 a litre here (76p) but as in the rest of the world things are a bit tighter than they have been since I first arrived.
I’ve had a few visitors in the last few months, a design friend from
Work is good, quite busy with the design work for this new type of nasal cannula Steve and I are working on. I’m in the model shop most of this week making prototypes of the form of our designs, that will feed into the CAD work Steve is doing then we’ll get some rapid prototypes made and test them out around the office before getting a proper tool made and testing them on real patients.
Last week I met up with a business advisor from a group called Better By Design which are part of the NZ government’s Trade and Industry department. I arranged a meeting with him to see if he could help me find a mentor from whom I could improve my design skills and business acumen as there isn’t anyone at work with enough experience for me to learn the skills I want to develop in order to lead the company through the design process (they’re all Engineers here and think slightly differently!). The meeting went very well and Dean (a former general manager of a large manufacturing firm here) was enthusiastic about helping me out and has promised to look into a few contacts for me. Better By Design was set up four years ago to help NZ companies integrate design principals into the day to day running of their businesses in order to improve profitability so they’ve got an interest in trying to promote design with Fisher and Paykel Healthcare.
I’m off to
