Images of engineering
I haven’t been at Hethel for a few weeks however Thursday brought a full day of a variety of tasks. It started with Derek delivering some RP parts to Scion-Sprays at the other end of the corridor who focus on engine management systems for small engines. My first question of course was what is a small engine – the answer anything under 250 cc like some motorbikes, scooters lawnmowers etc. Gavin the Managing Director showed me round their workshop and it was here that he explained what we were looking at that I managed to make a link to my two stroke lawnmower (small) engine ‘knowledge’ from horticultural college in the mid 1990’s. It is sometimes difficult to follow the explanations simply because I don’t have the vocabulary or working knowledge, but it is very intriguing.
My image of engineering prior to coming to Hethel was based on my experience of seeing the workshops at Eminox http://www.eminox.com/home/when my mum worked there some years back where the workshop contained lathes, welding equipment and steel cutters. I had never seen a CNC machine before I visited Hethel. When I was thinking about doing this project I watched Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (based on Alan Sillitoe’s novel) from 1960, set in a factory where the protagonist Arthur Seaton (played by Albert Finney) works a lathe having to make a thousand (identical) parts per day. Seaton works in a busy, crowded, dirty and noisy environment a far cry from the modern clean Hethel environment.
After the tour of the workshop Derek and I had a coffee and I was asking him about ‘Planned Obsolesce’ that I have been reading about in Made to Break (by Giles Slade). It’s a concept where objects are designed with obsolesce within a specific time frame. Promoted in America in 1932 as a way of ending the depression (1), which can be related to the current economic downturn and the promotion of ‘spending our way out of recession’.
Back to my RP objects. The terminology Rapid Prototyping is being replaced. Its original context is one where the technology did in fact offer a rapid process when compared with the historical alternative of making a prototype by hand at a lathe for example. And the terms prototype is being challenged as the processes can also be actual manufacturing. In the US they call it ‘digital manufacturing’, here in the UK its ‘additive layer manufacture’. This is because the process consists of adding a layer to a base material to build the object (or part), as apposed to subtractive engineering/manufacturing where a block of metal is reduced to the part. So with my second set of no pointed needles whichwere made of the plaster based material they needed to be strengthened so we used two methods. Some were slowly lowered into hot wax, then others were painted with epoxy resin, both were left to dry. The plaster based objects have a very different quality to the plastic objects they have a finer finish and feel more fragile. With both methods the process of production is apparent the layering is evident from the side of the object. I have to take some time to reflect on these objects and if the form is the one I really want. I imagine drawing and macro photography will help me to consider what changes I will need to make.
And finally, Derek and I, in the sprit of cross discipline working have been exchanging literature from our respective fields. Discussing these publications has been interesting and varied, with some exchanges being more engaging that others (from both our perspectives). I quite liked reading TCT (Time Compression Technologies – although nothing can actually compress time can it –isn’t that some kind of impossibility in terms of physics) as it offered a trade perspective on some of the subjects I am exploring on the residency. Perhaps I should lend Derek an Artist Newsletter?
1. Giles Slade Made to Break, Technology and obsolescence in America London, Harvard University Press, 2007 p. 151
