Team Pulse of Devonport High School for Boys, Plymouth, first approached The Barden Corporation, manufacturers of precision bearings, with the intent of asking for sponsorship as they attempted to compete at the South West Regional Finals of the Formula One in Schools Competition. Not only were the company able to support the team financially, but they also offered the team the fantastic opportunity to work with their design engineers to produce precision bearings to use on their balsa wood model Formula One car.
After winning the South West regional final, the team went on to triumph at the UK National Finals, held at the Autosport Show in Birmingham. This acheivement took Pulse to the World Championships, held alongside the 2008 Malaysian Grand Prix in Kuala Lumpur. Competing against 25 teams from around the world, Pulse once again won the award for the fastest model car and were crowned Champions of the competition.
As such, the four members of Pulse, John Ware, Samuel Wood, Andrew Lees and Thomas Simpson, worked closely with the design and manufacturing engineers at Barden, entering their clean room to assemble each part of the bearings which would be used on their competition cars in Malaysia.
John Ware, Team Manager of Pulse said: “It has been a pleasure working with The Barden Corporation over the past few years. Not only has their help and support enabled us to become world champions of the F1 in Schools competition, but it has given the whole team experience of working in the environment of a thriving engineering company, inspiring many of us to enter the world of both engineering and business after our time at school.”
Trevor Morris, Product Engineering Manager commented: “After doing so well getting to World Championships we wanted to ensure Pulse had every competitive advantage. We supplied them with bearings from our super precision miniature and instrument range, which are manufactured to extremely tight tolerances of less than 5 microns, and offered to let the team fit the bearings at our factory to avoid any damage to the axles. The results speak for themselves!”
Barden has sponsored Pulse since the start of this challenge, supplying bearings for the original car used in the regional and national finals of the F1 in Schools challenge over 12 months ago. The challenge is a unique competition in which students aged between 11 and 18 from schools, colleges and youth groups use CAD/CAM software to design, analyse, manufacture, test and race a miniature F1 car made from balsa wood and powered by CO2 cylinders.
As sponsors of the team, Barden supplied custom manufactured bearings for the model racing car and fitted them at their Plymouth factory. The miniature type, hybrid ceramic bearings have a bore diameter of just 3.175mm and an outside diameter of 6.35mm. To help optimise the performance of the miniature Formula 1 car, a dry lubricated bearing cage and 1mm diameter ceramic balls were used to reduce friction and enable faster speeds.
