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[March 2007]
PMI Trust Fund Announces 2006 Award Winners
The PMI Trust Fund, set up to encourage and reward endeavour, commitment and achievement, has announced the two winners of the 2006 Bursary Awards.Academic Award
The winner of the Academic Award was Mr Apichart Limpichaipanit from the Materials Department of the University of Oxford. Apichart impressed the judging panel with his presentation on his recent project work involving the wear properties and microstructural development of alumina and ceramic nanocomposites.
Apichart used his £2,000 bursary award to fund a trip to the Material Research Society Meeting on Microstructure & Mechanical Properties of Composites, held in Boston, MA, USA. Apichart was invited (with R I Todd) to present a poster at the meeting, on the theme 'Residual Stresses and Deformation Around Indentations of Alumina/Silicon Carbide Nanocomposites'.
The bursary award also allowed him to plan a further trip, this time to Waldkraiburg in Germany, to visit the main Morgan Advanced Ceramics plant (W Haldenwanger Technische Keramik GmbH & Co KG) in that country and to see the production of engineering ceramics - especially alumina and silicon carbide - on an industrial scale, an activity that has been of some significance in recent years.
The trustees of the PMI Trust Fund are indebted to the company for their willingness to show this young person around their factory and for their hospitality.
Industrial Award
The 2006 Industrial Award, meanwhile, went to Mr Matthew Sparkes of Ideal Standard, Excelsior Works, Stoke-on-Trent. The judging panel took great interest in Matthew's work, which was to improve the performance of the Contour Basin. The central objective of this particular project was to ensure that there was no longer any pooling of water, or any fills in the outlet at all, as these are considered harbouring sites for bacteria.
By heading a focus Entitlement team based in the sanitaryware manufacturing plant at Excelsior, they have also made an impressive impact on reject rates. Waste cracks have been cut from 20% down to 1%, helping to improve first-fire yields from 53% up to 83%.
The PMI Bursary Award enabled Matthew to travel to other sanitaryware manufacturing operations in Italy, in order to understand how different countries cope with similar problems and to learn from other cultures in the process.
At the same time, the trip helped build on Matthew's own knowledge and experience. Ideal Standard Europe was very supportive of Matthew's research visit, which also took in a workshop at the headquarters of Sacmi (Imola, BO, Italy) and a trip to the Tecnargilla exhibition in Rimini.
Both of these young winners will present a paper later in the year at an appropriate ceramic meeting. Details will be made available later on.
www.pmitrustfund.org.uk
ENDS