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| Yorkshire's 'Man of Steel' gets bigger thanks to hi-tech manufacturing skills | Yorkshire's 'Man of Steel' gets bigger thanks to hi-tech manufacturing skills |
| (about 5 hours later) | |
| "What happened to 'small'?" asked reader Jane Thomas in the thread to last week's Northerner post by Alan Sykes on Yorkshire's hopes of becoming European Capital of Sculpture. | "What happened to 'small'?" asked reader Jane Thomas in the thread to last week's Northerner post by Alan Sykes on Yorkshire's hopes of becoming European Capital of Sculpture. |
| Here's part of the answer: like the vast northern entities by Antony Gormley et al which illustrated Alan's piece, it's getting bigger. | Here's part of the answer: like the vast northern entities by Antony Gormley et al which illustrated Alan's piece, it's getting bigger. |
| Specifically, the plan for a 38 metre-high statue and column celebrating Rotherham and Sheffield's steel industry, towering close to the M1 at Kimberworth, has taken an important step forward. A very cleverly engineered two-metre model has been completed by the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) at Sheffield University. | |
| The aim of the stainless steel sculpture, complete with viewing room at the top of the column, is as much to show off the current and future skill of the area as to celebrate its mighty past. The maquette makes the point. It has been made at the AMRC with Boeing Composite Centre close to the site where it will stand when some £2.7 million has been raised from the private sector, with work scheduled to start in 2015. | |
| The core material is polyurethane resin board, usually found in prototypes and models of cars or the 'planes which are Boeing's main product. This was then sculpted by the Composite Centre's CMS five-axis machining centre, using cutting tools from Sheffield-based Technicut. | The core material is polyurethane resin board, usually found in prototypes and models of cars or the 'planes which are Boeing's main product. This was then sculpted by the Composite Centre's CMS five-axis machining centre, using cutting tools from Sheffield-based Technicut. |
| And you thought northern skills and manufacturing were dead? John Halfpenny, manufacturing engineer at the AMRC with Boeing, advises otherwise. He and his team followed extraordinarily detailed computer models provided by Professor Marcos Rodrigues and Mariza Kormann in the Geometric Modelling and Pattern Recognition Group at Sheffield Hallam University. | And you thought northern skills and manufacturing were dead? John Halfpenny, manufacturing engineer at the AMRC with Boeing, advises otherwise. He and his team followed extraordinarily detailed computer models provided by Professor Marcos Rodrigues and Mariza Kormann in the Geometric Modelling and Pattern Recognition Group at Sheffield Hallam University. |
| Their patented 3D laser scanning technology then helped to turn the design from 2D to 3D using five million data points. Halfpenny says: | Their patented 3D laser scanning technology then helped to turn the design from 2D to 3D using five million data points. Halfpenny says: |
| The scanning data were good and well put together, so it was a simple matter to scale that up. We had to use the raw data to get all the surface detail, and manipulate that to produce the toolpaths. Working with the raw data from a scanned model wasn't something I'd done before, and I learned a lot which we can now apply to other projects. | The scanning data were good and well put together, so it was a simple matter to scale that up. We had to use the raw data to get all the surface detail, and manipulate that to produce the toolpaths. Working with the raw data from a scanned model wasn't something I'd done before, and I learned a lot which we can now apply to other projects. |
Among lessons was the fact that the original plan to create the figure as one piece, or two at worst, was impractical. Successful manufacturing's ancient virtue of adaptability came into play and they ended up with eight dovetailing sections. Halfpenny says: | Among lessons was the fact that the original plan to create the figure as one piece, or two at worst, was impractical. Successful manufacturing's ancient virtue of adaptability came into play and they ended up with eight dovetailing sections. Halfpenny says: |
| The Man of Steel would have been very difficult to machine in one go, because of the complex shape of the sculpture – we'd have problems holding it in the machine because everything is contoured, and it would require a lot of undercuts. For example, there's no way we could have cut under his chin unless we cut his head off. | The Man of Steel would have been very difficult to machine in one go, because of the complex shape of the sculpture – we'd have problems holding it in the machine because everything is contoured, and it would require a lot of undercuts. For example, there's no way we could have cut under his chin unless we cut his head off. |
Eeek. But all went well and the original 30cm bronze maquette made by sculptor Steve Mehdi | Eeek. But all went well and the original 30cm bronze maquette made by sculptor Steve Mehdi now has a two metre-high older brother ready for a coating of stainless steel. It will then be mounted on a two metre column made by Sheffield-based Tool and Steel Products and go on a fund-raising and news-spreading tour of the area. |
| This will include the Global Manufacturing Festival at the AMRC in April, which marks the centenary of the discovery of stainless steel by the Sheffield metallurgist Harry Brearley. It will also be exhibited at the excellent Kelham Island museum in Sheffield and the Magna Science Centre in Rotherham, whose buildings – still awe-inspiring – are less than a third of Templeborough steelworks' melting shop which was once a mile long and the largest in the world. | This will include the Global Manufacturing Festival at the AMRC in April, which marks the centenary of the discovery of stainless steel by the Sheffield metallurgist Harry Brearley. It will also be exhibited at the excellent Kelham Island museum in Sheffield and the Magna Science Centre in Rotherham, whose buildings – still awe-inspiring – are less than a third of Templeborough steelworks' melting shop which was once a mile long and the largest in the world. |
| Mehdi, a former steelworker himself, says: | Mehdi, a former steelworker himself, says: |
| Man of Steel was inspired by the men and women I worked with in engineering in Sheffield, and the generations of people who worked in steel and coal across the region. The inspiration for a landmark version came from local people who first saw the sculpture in an exhibition of my work and said 'This could be our Angel of the North'. | Man of Steel was inspired by the men and women I worked with in engineering in Sheffield, and the generations of people who worked in steel and coal across the region. The inspiration for a landmark version came from local people who first saw the sculpture in an exhibition of my work and said 'This could be our Angel of the North'. |
| It embraces the future by bringing together the heritage of the old industries with the new technologies of the Sheffield city region. Our rapid developments in design technology and manufacture are being led by the University of Sheffield AMRC in Rotherham, so I am delighted that their expertise has created this version of the Man of Steel. | It embraces the future by bringing together the heritage of the old industries with the new technologies of the Sheffield city region. Our rapid developments in design technology and manufacture are being led by the University of Sheffield AMRC in Rotherham, so I am delighted that their expertise has created this version of the Man of Steel. |
| Halfpenny adds: | Halfpenny adds: |
| It's good to work on a project that's potentially going to be in Sheffield for the next 200 years. | It's good to work on a project that's potentially going to be in Sheffield for the next 200 years. |
| And this could be you, not that far off, peeping out from the viewing platform at the M1, full of relocators from London by then, heading north. | And this could be you, not that far off, peeping out from the viewing platform at the M1, full of relocators from London by then, heading north. |