EDUCATION

 
 

Bagpress vacuum presses can now be found in around 1000 schools, colleges and universities throughout the UK and abroad and the number is growing all the time.


The range of projects tackled is wide and a Bagpress system can be safely used by every age of student from primary through to graduate level. In many cases we are told that the Bagpress never gets put away as there is always someone who needs to use it at some point during the day.


We have developed three sets of pre-cut moulds for schools referred to as Nested Mould Kits 1,2 & 3. We have a selection of moulds for specific projects such as salad servers and  child chair backs as well as a variety of abstract circular and elliptical curves and wave forms (such as used in the wine rack below right). The abstract forms ensure that students aren’t all tempted to make exactly the same thing. They can study the shapes available and then design a project incorporating it employing their own imagination and creativity. These mould kits offer an ideal way to ‘hit the ground running’ when you first purchase your vacuum press system.


The Bagpress system that you buy for your school is not a de-featured, smaller scale, educational version of the equipment but is exactly the same piece of machinery that is sold into a wide variety of industrial manufacturers up and down the country. It allows you to teach the design and prototyping process far more thoroughly than if you are having to use the alternative ‘male and female former’ method of laminating. This is because the tooling can be made very quickly from high density polystyrene and the process only requires a single mould rather than a pair. Therefore the amount of time taken up producing the former is reduced dramatically and tweaking the design and altering the mould does not require hours of laborious reworking. Instead a simple sanding block or a single pass on the bandsaw can alter the mould and make it ready for a second test pressing. This is a far more realistic design development experience for the students and ensures that most of their time is spent making the product and honing the design rather than producing the tooling.


We aim to be as close to a one-stop-shop as is possible and supply a full range of vacuum pressing materials by mail order. These include thin birch and flexible plywood, styrofoam blocks for mould making, adhesives, veneer tape and a whole load more. If you aren’t sure if we can supply a particular item them just call and ask.


FREE VENEER SCHEME


We know that education budgets are often tight and one of the initiatives of which we are particularly proud is the Free Veneer Scheme. This has been running for eleven years and has proved to be a great popular success. It is very simple. We collect offcuts of veneer from several large industrial veneering companies in the UK and then send them out to schools, completely free of charge, whenever they place an invoicable order. All you have to do is add ‘Free Veneer Pack’ to the bottom of your purchase order. Whilst we can’t guarantee exactly what you will get in any particular pack there is usually a good mix of the main commercial species such as oak, maple, walnut, cherry, beech, ash and sapele as well as a few more exotic woods such as zebrano, birds eye maple and wenge. There will always be several leaves from the same bundle allowing book matching and other reflective designs to be achieved and their size makes them ideal for many school projects.


If you are reasonably local to us you are also welcome to visit us and load up your car/minibus with offcuts of foam, plywood and MDF from our workshop.

 












 
Design Technology, coffee table, leeds grammar school, laminating, veneering
Salad servers, a common first laminating project
A small desk clock formed in a Bagpress
A tall clock formed around a polystyrene mould in a Bagpress
A starter kit of ready cut polystyrene moulds for school projects. Nested mould kit 1.
A small veneered picture frame

Projects (above) made using one of our series of Nested Mould Kits - below

Veneered Picture Frame

A Knight’s Templar School project

Storage Unit

St. Christopher School projects

Tiffin Girls’ School projects

A Dauntsey’s School project

Tiffin Girls’ School projects

Dauntsey’s School projects