Research For Musical Machine 1

Jun 12, 2017

2 min read

History of Mechanical Engineering Department in the University of Sheffield

On 15th December 1916, it was decided that the Faculty of Applied Science would split into two faculties; the Faculty of Metallurgy and the Faculty of Engineering. On 21st June 1917, the Department of Mechanical Engineering was born at the first meeting of the Faculty.

To celebrate 100 years of Mechanical Engineering department of the University, we decided to build a musical machine by using mechanical techniques. Actually there was another guy who built a musical machine last year.(Shown as follow picture)

He basically used the marbles to hit different instruments to get different sounds. This year we are trying to use a completely different way to make the musical machine; also, add extra elements that can represent culture and history of Sheffield industry.

In order to know history and culture of Sheffield industry, today we visit the Weston Park Museum and Kelham Island Museum, which are two famous museums in Sheffield. The first one we visit was Weston Park Museum. It is the largest museum in Sheffield that shows the history and culture of Sheffield in many ways. As Sheffield is a historical city and well-known for its steel manufacturing industry especially for sliver tableware. So we decided to include those elements in our design, which are shown as follows.

Symbols that represents Sliver knives manufacturing industry of Sheffield in 20 century.

Tool Manufacturing Industry

The second museum we visit was Kelham Island Museum. Basically it is an old manufacturing factory in Sheffield. We saw how the steam power engine works and casting process like forging, which really helped open our mind for solving the power and manufacture problems of the musical machine design.

Steam Power Engine