Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1880 [PAGE 24]

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APPAEATUS AND EQUIPMENTS.

The Machine shop is a substantial brick structure, erected in 1871, for the purposes of this School, with that of Architecture and Military Tactics. It has a sixteen-horse power engine, and the machine tools most needed, including a planer, two engine and three plain lathes, drilling machines, etc. There is a pattern shop, a blacksmith shop, and the requisite amount of vices and bench-room. A collection of models and machines serves to illustrate peculiar structures and methods of applying force.

INSTKUCTION.

The elementary course in Mechanics begins with the second term of the Freshman year, following a term of elementary plane drawing, and continues to the end of the year. The student begins in the pattern-shop, and is taught to produce simple forms of wood, and wood-turning. Prom this work he goes to the Blacksmith shop, where he practices drawing, squaring, bending, welding, and otherwise fashioning iron. Keturning to the Machine shop, he learns to cut off, center and drill wrought and cast iron. He gives much time at the bench in finding surfaces and forming shapes with the cold chisel and the file. His next lessons are at the hand lathe in turning iron and brass, and afterward at the engine lathe and the planer in turning, cutting screws, and in facing up various forms. In all this work he is under the constant supervision of a watchful master, who holds him strictly to correct methods, and makes him accountable for accurate results. The object of this work is to teach correct ideas of the use and care of tools, and the development of forms, and the only result sought is accurate workmanship. The pieces when finished may go upon the scrap pile, or into the melting pot, if not wanted for samples. In the second year the student is employed upon some form of actual construction. The interest pertaining to doing a new thing is increased by giving that new thing a recognized utility. Some form of machine is chosen, such, for example, as the need of the shop itself may require. The subject is taken into the drawingroom, its purposes and requirements are fully discussed, and the steps of the design are worked out. If at all complex, the whole class works upon the same drawings until the design has crystalized into definite shape. Then the parts are assigned to individuals. One takes a wheel, another a piece of the frame, or if the item be large, two persons work together upon it; detail drawings are made and offered for inspection. If found satisfactory, the drawing is taken to the pattern shop and the pattern is made, which must also undergo rigid inspection before it can go forward to the foundry. Thence the rough casting goes to the Machine shop, and receives such finishing, by such methods and with such tools as the case may require. Thus the Sophomore class of 1879-80 have built the heavier parts of a large drill press. The standard of this machine is 84 inches high; its circular table, 25 inches in diameter, swings on the main pillar, and is raised and lowered by rack motion; it will be adapted for automatic or hand feed; its spindle will