Science Castle 2021
Best Development Award and Encouragement Award, 5th THK Prize (Alnilam)
- Science Castle 2021 5th THK Prize: Best Development Award and Encouragement Award
Overview
I applied to the 5th THK Prize at Science Castle, a research conference for junior and senior high school students organized by Leave a Nest, with Alnilam, which I had only just started developing. The result was winning the Best Development Award and the Encouragement Award at the same time, an evaluation on par with the top prize.
Activity log
I applied in 2021. The problem statement came from my own experience: ordering a circuit board from a manufacturer takes a week, and during that week a student’s trial and error simply stops. I condensed everything from the machine’s concept to the first prototype into the format of a research presentation.
From the presentation slides: an overview of Alnilam and a comparison with conventional methodsThe presentation centered on the concept sketches, the prototype, and a manufacturing process that combines CNC milling with electroless plating. It was my first time converting something I had built into the conventions of a research presentation, and I struggled hard with the balance of how far to talk about the technology and where to begin talking about the problem.
The Best Development Award certificate 
The Encouragement Award certificate 
The Encouragement Award certificate (scanned) 
The certificate designating a THK Prize certified projectAfter the awards, the supplementary prize was mentoring from specialists at THK and Leave a Nest. The guidance covered the practical use of actuators and methods for planning and progress management, and both fed straight into Alnilam’s subsequent mechanism design and the way its development was run.
Structural feedback received during mentoring 
A proposal document for structural improvementsWhat mattered most was that specialists from industry engaged seriously with a high school student’s invention. The feeling that people become serious when the problem is real has been the driving force that keeps Alnilam from ending as a hobby project and pulls it toward commercialization.