How these tiny hovercrafts are leading to big opportunities at Sask. Polytechnic

Students show off hovercraft designs WATCH: A group of Saskatoon students were camera ready for a high tech show and tell on Tuesday.

Students at Saskatchewan Polytechnic are getting a head start on the old adage, “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.”

The group of 12 second-year students at the college’s Design Manufacturing Engineering Technician (DMET) program are combining all their skills and knowledge gathered over the last two years to design, build and program hovercrafts as a final six-week group project to wrap up their time at Saskatchewan Polytechnic.

“It's a really good example of a lot of the different systems that they need to learn about,” Instructor Tim Muench said. “It covers the electronics, it covers the programming, it covers the mechanical stuff. They also do 3D printing on a lot of components that they use and then a lot of the fabrication.”

This year’s class was divided into three teams of four students who worked together to build the hovercrafts. Students were also tasked with adding an additional feature that makes each hovercraft unique.

Jack Sanderson’s Team Red originally planned on using a sensor at the front of their hovercraft which would steer it away from walls, similar to what a Roomba does. But with a motor only capable of going one direction, the team instead pivoted to using an LCD screen as their custom feature.

But that’s all part of the fun.

“There's a lot of late nights just trying to sort out the littlest issues and a lot of progressing one way and taking two steps back from that one step forward and having to go a whole different route,” he said.

While the hard work doesn’t exactly look the same as a 5,000-word essay as a final project, Muench said it’s a joy to watch classmates problem-solve and compete against each other.

“It’s kind of an interesting distraction to the school year when they can start racing these things up and down the hallways and competing with each other,” he said. “As they're learning how to get things operational and fixing all the little bugs that they find.”

The program is geared towards a career in manufacturing and the complex automated systems used in mass production, but with employers unable to find enough of these skilled workers, Sanderson said the program has set him up for jobs in either the agriculture, mining or technology industries.

“I've always enjoyed working with my hands and actually being able to think of something in my head and make it a physical reality and that's what this program allows me to do,” Sanderson said.

This class marks the second year Saskatchewan Polytechnic has added the hovercraft project to the program, and with industries constantly changing, Muench said it’s a great opportunity for the college to offer even more for its students.

“We've kind of expanded our horizon into product design and integration, so it's a good extension of the manufacturing automation that we've always had,” Muench said.