Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1888 [PAGE 155]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

158

UNIVEKSITY OF ILLINOIS.

engineering students receive instruction in this elementary shop practice. During the present year the combined class has been so large that although it has been taught, as heretofore, in two divisions, the employment of an assistant instructor was made necessary. The sophomore class of mechanical engineering students has worked in the shops nine hours per week during two terms. Beginning with the present year, this exercise will be continued through the third term. After several weeks in the foundry and blacksmith shop occupied in moulding, melting iron and casting, and in the forging and tempering of cutting tools for metals such as cold chisels, drills, and lathe tools, the class begins the actual construction of machines. This work, to which the remainder of the year is given, consists of making the patterns, moulding, casting, finishing, fitting and erecting some machine of which the shop is in need. During the past year three hand lathes have furnished practice for this class. These are now nearly finished, together with the countershifting, pulleys and hangers, and will be in operation by the end of the present term. Mr. E. A. Kimball continues to give the instruction in the shops. I n connection with this machine construction four hours per week during two terms are given to machine drawing and elementary designing. The student has learned the use of drawing instruments, and the principles of projection while studying projection drawing and descriptive geometry in the freshman year. H e is therefore prepared to take up in the sophomore year the preparation of drawings of machines. The class first makes a working drawing to scale of some piece of machinery, such as a connecting rod, the general design of the piece beinjr aiuw~~ * ~ ^ — roughly executed blackboard sketch with written dimensions. After completing this drawing, the students are detailed to make sketches and take dimensions of parts of the machines in the shops from which they make working drawings. The remainder of the time given to this subject is occupied by working out the details, as far as their knowledge will permit, of some machine to be built in the shops. The object in this, as in all subsequent work in the drafting room, is to teach the student to think for himself* as he works; to be systematic, to devise the simplest and most economical forms for patterns, casting and finishing, and to make not mere pictures, but clear and finished wrorking drawings, which can be readily followed in the shop, and which shall be carefully marked with dimensions in the proper places to facilitate construction. All drawings are made, as far as practicable, of a uniform size. Drawings for practice are made on Whatman's cold pressed paper. Detail drawings of machines to be built are made in pencil on white paper and traced. Blue-prints for shop use are made from the tracings, which are preserved in the drafting room. I n the third term of the sophomore year, the subject of materials of engineering is taken up. This consists of descriptions of the various materials used by the constructing engineer, the methods