The Technology Station for Metals Value Adding and Product development is a Government initiative to assist SMME's to be more competitive. This Technology Station concentrating on product development with one of the focus areas in Agricultural development. The technology Station got the infrastructure of the world renowned Centre for Rapid Prototyping and Manufacture to its disposal. The Personnel of the Mechanical engineering department of Central University of Technology are involved in this initiative.

In the Agricultural focus area we are looking at developing specialized equipment for small farmers, greenhouses and equipment (eg. small packaging machines) that can add value to the produce of farmers.

One of the projects that we are involved in is the development of a ride on lawn-mower/ sprayer combination (cylindrical blade) which can do mowing, spraying and transport for the turf industry. The aim of this project is to development a piece of equipment for a specific need in the industry, that is not manufactured locally at present. A prototype of this machine is currently undergoing testing for commercialization in the near future. Envisaged further developments are a trailer and slasher for the existing machine as well as the development of a golf-cart.

The aim is not to reproduce existing designs but to develop specialized equipment, suitable for African conditions.

AIM OF TECHNOLOGY STATION FOR METALS VALUE ADDING AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

The aim of the Technology Station is to assist SMME's to become more competitive through Technological Assistance. Assisting them to get access to technologies and expertise available at Technicon's will do this. The focus areas of MVA-TS are development in agricultural, plastic, casting, jewelry and machine building industries.

TRACTOR / CROP SPRAYER / LAWNMOWER

One of our lecturers has realized that there exist a need for a multi-purposed implement for small farmers and also tunnel farmers which can do crop spraying, mowing the lawn, moving small loads into small places. This was done through a design, which was built into this first prototype.

Envisage further developments are a trailer for a tractor, a slasher and possibly a change over to a golf car and specialized equipment for farmers.

STASOFT We did a design change on the stasoft bottle. The customer want a drip free bottle. This means a total design change on the cap and neck of the excisting mould. We scanned the bottle and neck. A new cap design was done and the neck piece of the bottle was changed. The prototypes was grown on the SLA machine.
		These prototypes was send to the customer. He used the prototypes to see if the filling machine can grip the caps to fit it to the bottles. The machine could not grip it so the covex shape had to be changed to a concave shape on the cap. It was done and new prototypes was grown. The new one was done on the SLS.
		The moulds was manufactured and the new design is introduced in the market If the prototyping route was not taken it would have resulted in a expensive mould that had to be redone.

AIM OF TECHNOLOGY STATION FOR METALS VALUE ADDING AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT The aim of the Technology Station is to assist SMME's to become more competitive through Technological Assistance. Assisting them to get access to technologies and expertise available at Technikon's will do this. The focus areas of MVA-TS are development in the Agricultural, Plastic, casting, jewelry and machine building industries. TRACTOR/ CROP SPRAYER/ LAWNMOWER One of our lecturers have realized that there exist a need for a multi purpose implement for small farmers and also tunnel farmers which can do crop spraying, mowing the lawn, moving small loads in small places. This was done through a design, which was built into this first prototype.
	Envisage further developments are a trailer for the tractor, a slasher and possibly a change over to a golf car and specialized equipment for farmers.