Product realisation

A recurring, avoidable loss: a genuinely good product but little or no photographic evidence of the process or finished item. Realisation is judged from the submitted evidence, so a moderator who cannot see the making cannot award the marks. Photograph as you go: the marking-out, key stages, tricky joints, any CAM, and several views of the finished product.

A neat product does not automatically earn a high mark. The mark reflects complexity, skill, precision and function. A simple product any beginner could make quickly, even if tidy, shows little demanding skill and is capped below the top band. Build in genuine challenges — accurate joints, shaped parts, a mechanism — and execute them accurately.

Quality control (QC) is checking the work against the specification and its tolerances as you make, correcting anything outside the limits. Quality assurance (QA) is broader and earlier — the system of standards set up to prevent faults. In a project you mainly show QC: working to a tolerance (plus or minus 1 mm) and checking each part. Measuring is control, not assurance.

Using CAM is only credited as successful if you show you drove it. A folder that says 'I laser-cut the parts' but includes no CAD file, screenshots or machine settings evidences nothing — it could be a pressed button on someone else's file. Include the CAD drawing, and describe the material, speed, power and layout you set. Successful technology use is evidenced, not asserted.

Manipulating materials sensitively means the right process for each material. Candidates lose skill marks by forcing every part through one method — cutting everything on the laser cutter, or treating metal like plastic. Match process to material: line bend or vacuum form acrylic, saw and plane timber, file and finish metal. One method for everything shows less skill.

Even when a folder has photos, gathering them only at the end is a fault. Evidence reconstructed after making is usually thin and misses the very steps that showed skill — the tricky joint, the forming, the machine set-up. Photograph stage by stage as the making happens, so the skill and precision are visible, not just the final object.

A common, costly belief: 'I made the real product, so I do not need photos of it.' Realisation is moderated from the folder of evidence, not the object, which the moderator never sees. Without photographs of the stages and finished product, the examiner cannot see the complexity, skill, precision and function, so those marks cannot be awarded.