19 July 2006

 

The unsuspected beauty of images from engineering is revealed today by the winners of the University of Cambridge Epson Photography Competition at the Department of Engineering.

The Department of Engineering’s annual photography contest was started two years ago and is now well established with the winners having their pictures reproduced in the technical and popular press around the world. The competition is open to all staff and students in the Department.

The winning photograph shows what your inkjet printer is doing, if you could only see the movement of the ink drops, moving at 6 metres per second as they hurtle towards the page. Taken by Dr Steve Hoath, a Research Associate at the Inkjet Research Centre at the Department for Engineering, it is entitled ‘Tails from the Nozzle Bank’.

In second place, student Laura Harrison's untitled photo is of prototypes of elastic chain-link designs. She is investigating the potential for using 'Selective Laser Sintering' processes for new garment manufacturing techniques. A chain-link structure enables the creation of flexible textile structures from rigid materials. Laura has recently completed the Manufacturing Engineering Tripos at the Institute for Manufacturing and next year will be studying Industrial Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art.

In third place is a remarkable image which shows a ball only ~65µm across captured in the cage of a microgripper. This device is suitable for trapping and holding biological specimens such as cells without applying a force directly on it, thus avoiding potential damage to the cell. The image was taken by Dr Jack Luo and Dr Yong Qing Fu and is entitled 'Nanohand and its captured ball'. Dr Jack Luo develops microsystems for microelectronics, medical and biological applications, and acoustic wave based biosensors to detect cancers at molecule level. Dr Yong Qing Fu’s research covers micro-electro-mechanical systems, shape memory alloy, surface science and thin films. He has developed several types of TiNi (Tiny Internet Interfaces) thin film-based microactuators for biomedical applications.

The panel of judges includes Phillip King RA, sculptor and President of the Royal Academy 1999; Professor Keith Glover, Head of the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Roberto Cipolla, Professor of Information Engineering, Dr Allan McRobie, and Dr Philip Guildford of the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge. Previous winners have included Ghim Wei Ho’s iconic image of a 'Nano flower', which won the competition in 2004.

Epson kindly sponsored the 2006 Engineering Photo Competition at the University of Cambridge, and provided £1000 worth of professional printers as prizes.

First Prize: Dr Steve Hoath, ‘Tails from the Nozzle Bank’.

Dr Hoath is a Research Associate working with the Director of the Inkjet Research Centre, Dr Graham Martin, at the Institute for Manufacturing. Steve will receive the first prize of an Epson Stylus Photo R2400 professional photo printer that has been generously donated by Epson.

The photo was taken with a Nikon D70 with a Navitar zoom macro lens and a very short flash duration (20 ns) light source. This image was taken during a series of experiments at the Department's Inkjet Research Centre investigating the performance of inkjet printers. It shows ink drops emerging from a bank of inkjet nozzles (just visible at the bottom of the picture). The image is about 2.3 mm across, the drop heads are 50 microns across and the tails are less than 10 microns wide (10 times thinner than a human hair). The drops are moving at around 6 m/s hence the need for a very short flash to freeze the motion. The drops are in three groups with slightly different drop firing times. In some cases the drops are still attached to the nozzles by long ligaments of stretching liquid. Other drops show separation and the formation of smaller, “satellite” drops from the collapsing ligaments. This image was adjusted for brightness and contrast and rotated for effect.

The Inkjet Research Centre, Institute for Manufacturing, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge: http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/pp/inkjet/default.html

Other entries in the Department's 2006 photo competition can be seen at http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/photocomp/2006/

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