Christmas has come early for the teaching team at Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust after the University of Sheffield AMRC donated 3D pens for its young patients to draw on their creativity and discover their inner engineer.

The University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) has gifted the teaching team ten of the high-tech pens, which work just like regular pens but instead of ink they use plastic filament, allowing shapes, models and structures to be drawn on a surface or in the air. 

Great British Bake Off 2018 champion Dr Rahul Mandal, a STEM ambassador and research engineer for Nuclear AMRC, visited the hospital with Jack Forrest from the AMRC’s STEM and Outreach team to hand over the pens and meet some of the young patients.

Jack said: “The AMRC Group has long been a supporter of Sheffield Children’s and the AMRC STEM team has been working with the teaching team to promote science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) activities. To be able to give them this resource is another way of continuing that support. We really hope the children enjoy using the pens and discover how fun and creative engineering can be.”

Helen Hiley, a teacher at Sheffield Children’s, said: “Providing the teaching team with these resources will allow us to work with the children individually and in small groups on design technology activities. We are really grateful for the donations and support that have been given to us and the children we work with in the hospital by the team at the AMRC.

“Using the 3D pens, patients can design their own 2D shapes or follow templates and then combine them to make 3D models. We’ve had children making everything from bridges to houses. They really enjoy it and the designs are so colourful.”