Project Mistion: Alabama
Casting metal articles is both an ancient art and a modern technology. Alabama is a major casting producer and provider of both art and high tech castings for the nation. Metal casting provides needed articles for our future like ductile iron pipe but faces a severe demographic challenge. The lack of public and especially young people’s awareness of metal casting as a possible career choice is an existent threat to the industry.
An opportunity exists in Alabama to organize a project that would be interesting to students, supported by industry, beneficial to the University and engaging for the public. The Alabama project proposed is to use the cupola and students of UAB to produce castings at Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park. These castings would be used at historical and architectural restorations and displays. The students would use state of the art technology to design and produce these historical castings. Video would be produced that would promote the industry in the state, be useful for engaging visitors at the Park and useful in promoting UAB.
UAB has recently won the ASM Senior design competition for their construction of a small cupola (ref. Modern Casting OCT-2010 p.10) for the art department. The metal casting program at UAB is ideally situated to support the production of historical castings since it already has an active collaboration between the art community and the engineering community in casting production. The cupola could be transported to the Park and the castings required produced there. The students will be able to use the state of the art engineering tools to design and develop the casting production. This will benefit the University in recruiting students into the metal casting program.
Sponsoring companies will provide the funding required for the program. We anticipate 4 to 6 sponsors contributing from $10,000 to $15,000 to support the effort. Sponsoring companies will be featured for their support in the video produced from the project. This video will be made available to outlets like APT for their use providing publicity for the sponsoring companies. The video will be owned by the project and this would allow the sponsoring companies to use it for their own promotional activity. The value of the high quality video alone should completely provide value to the sponsoring companies that exceed their support funding. Finally but perhaps most importantly, sponsoring companies will have direct contact with students enthusiastic and engaged in metal casting.
Tannehill Ironworks State Park would provide the site and the utilities needed for the demonstration and production. This project would leverage the history of this important site. The firing of the furnace in 1976 will provide a bridge between the site’s historical production and the new project. Video from that event will be integrated into the final video product.
The ROUPES VALLEY FURNACES at Tannehill Furnace No. 1 was built in 1859 followed by Furnaces 2 and 3 in 1862
The Alabama team would lead by Phillip Harrison who has organized the effort. Other team members will include: Alan Druschitz-UAB, Scott Lammers-AFS, Raymond Monroe-SFSA, Carl Addison-Tannehill, and a representative from each of the sponsoring companies. The total budget required from the sponsoring companies will be $60,000.