High School Students Have Fun Solving My Fluid Power Problem

I am not great at trouble-shooting mechanical problems. As a matter of fact, when I was young, I decided to take apart my bicycle because it wasn’t working properly and, let me just say, that bike was never fully functional again. It had a kind of “lean” to it.

There was definitely no fluid power in my bike, but along the same lines, when the fluid power demonstrator that I was going to bring to a local high school wasn’t working, I ended up soaking wet in my attempt to fix it.

I contacted the teacher, and he said I should bring it anyway. So on April 29, I brought the demonstrator to the Principles of Engineering class at Washington High School in Milwaukee, in hopes that they may be able to trouble-shoot the problem or at the very least see how it was put together and learn more about fluid power.

Well, those students are a lot more skilled than I am. After about twenty minutes of trying things out, the students worked together and fixed it! They ended up feeling accomplished and had a lot of fun using the demonstrator. It was a great day and no one ended up wet.

If you would like to demonstrate how your company uses fluid power and be a guest speaker at a school, contact Lynn Beyer at lbeyer@nfpa.com or 414-778-3364.

Sidenote: The problem ended up being a kinked cord that was under the cover of the machine and not easily seen.