It has been said that the engineer’s epitaph is “much endeavour, little glory”, and many engineers work at the cutting edge of their profession – whether it’s the work they do, or the circumstances in which they do it – for little acclaim.

If you take cutting edge in a literal sense, there are mechanical engineers trying to help surgeons to operate through smaller incisions, to more difficult-to-reach parts of the body, with ever-greater precision.

Robotic systems have been around for some 20 years, says Peter Brett, a professor of biomedical engineering at Aston University, but things are advancing all the time. “The latest thing is biocompatability,” he says. “There’s a need to develop things with a great empathy to the body and its processes. It shows the breadth of the sphere that mechanical engineers are working in. They have to know about medicine, surgical practice, how the body works, as well as knowing their own field. It’s what makes it really exciting.” He describes a hip implant: “The material has to be compatible and it has to be attached in a way that the bones don’t fracture. The loads taken on by them are all worked out by mechanical engineering techniques. Then, you’ll want to measure their condition, so you put a sensor in them. The challenge is to get the empathy with the body. Like most engineering, it’s about solving all sorts of challenges.”

When it comes to challenges, Jim Kay thrives on them. He’s the head of engineering at the Diamond synchrotron – essentially an X-ray 100 billion times brighter than one you would use on a broken leg.

Kay explains some of the difficulties involved in keeping a synchrotron operational: “The electron beam is focused to 40 microns [the diameter of a human hair] and has to travel more than 60 metres, so stability is vital. To measure this we use seismometers so sensitive that they can pick up earthquakes in South America. We have to manage the response of the equipment constantly.”

The synchrotron uses absurdly fine measurements – microns (a millionth of a metre), and even nanometres (a thousand-millionth). “We need to be this precise because structures we’re trying to examine can be are measured in angstroms, which are a tenth of a nanometre,” he says.

Such precision would be impossible for Mark Hunt, whose working environment is cutting-edge. That’s because Hunt, an RAF squadron leader, is regularly in command of up to 200 people in Afghanistan, on 30 minutes’ notice to launch aircraft, day and night, seven days a week, for months at a time.

It requires permanent 12-hour shifts to maintain airworthiness for battle and this under some of the harshest climatic conditions on Earth, not least temperatures between -5C and 50C and constant swirling dust.

“The Harrier is a peculiar aircraft,” he says. “You have to take the wing off to take the engine out. It means that it takes a lot longer to change the engine on a Harrier than it does with most other aircraft. Once the engine is back in, all the systems need to be tested. All the time you’re under pressure to get the Harrier back in service and in the air.”

Hunt describes Afghanistan as “not the most benign” environment. “There are risks,” he says. “You have to be on your toes.” Back home now for 12 months, Hunt is devoting some of his time to visiting schools to promote careers in science and engineering. “It’s important to give something back,” he says. “My career so far has proved that engineering is a gateway to many life opportunities, not just a linear career path.”

Engineers’ feats

1698 Thomas Savery patents the basic steam engine
1712 Thomas Newcomen develops a working atmospheric steam engine
1769 James Watt patents a steam engine with a separate condenser
1803 Richard Trevithick builds the first steam locomotive to undertake practical work
1825 George Stephenson runs Locomotion, the first passenger steam locomotive, between Stockton and Darlington
1847 Institution of Mechanical Engineers founded
1860 Jean-Joseph Etienne Lenoir develops the first successful internal combustion engine
1863 The world’s first underground railway, the Metropolitan Line, opens in London
1903 The Wright Flyer becomes the first heavier-than-air machine to fly in a sustained, controlled way with a pilot onboard
1937 Frank Whittle invents the jet engine
1953 John Gibbon develops the heart-lung machine
1954 The world’s first nuclear power station opens in Obninsk, near Moscow
1961 Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human being in space
1983 The world’s first maglev train begins operating in Birmingham
1991 Opening of Delabole, the UK’s first wind farm

Source: IMechE

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