We're sponsoring UQ Racing, the University of Queensland's Formula SAE team. Each year they design, build, and race a formula-style car against university teams from around the world.
As a Brisbane company with deep ties to the local engineering community, this is a natural one for us. UQ is where we both came out of, and the skills students develop through Formula SAE (CAD, manufacturing, embedded systems, data analysis) are the same ones we're trying to introduce to younger students through the Micromelon platform.
Beyond the cash sponsorship we're also helping out on the manufacturing side. The UQ Racing team have access to our 3D printing services for prototype parts and one-off brackets, and we run small production batches of their custom PCBs through our prototyping SMT line. The same gear we use to manufacture the Rover. It's a good fit for the kind of fast iteration a Formula SAE build cycle demands.
The UQ Racing car has Micromelon branding alongside the other sponsors, which we're chuffed about. Supporting the engineering pipeline at every stage, from primary school classrooms to university workshops, is something we genuinely care about.