Staff at Teesside University worked with Billingham-based Tomlinson Hall & Co to produce a piece of animation to demonstrate how its Liquivac vacuum pump operated.

The company was put in contact with Dave Cockburn, a senior lecturer in games art in Teesside University’s School of Computing and a computer games artist.

He worked in conjunction with Horizonworks, a Newcastle-based marketing company, that was developing a new brand, website and marketing materials to relaunch Liquivac for Tomlinson Hall.

Using the original drawings, Cockburn was able to make a 3D digital model of the pump.

He then animated the model to show how the pump operated and how it uses its unique liquid ring vacuum design to deal with a variety of different materials including liquids, foams, emulsions and loose solids.

He said: “We were able to converge art and engineering to show off the pump in a modern way and use the animation as a marketing tool. One of the biggest technical challenges was the way in which we showed fluid flowing through the pump.

“The key thing when doing this was the attention to detail. Because this is going to be shown to engineers, the accuracy of the animation is paramount. I’ve been able to use this as a lecture tool when teaching students and show the way in which games engines can be used in lots of different ways. As a result, our students will have lots of transferable skills to be used in a variety of work environments.”

The animation is now being used on a new website for Liquivac and has also received favourable feedback after Liquivac was launched in the Middle East on a market visit to the United Arab Emirates.