Local Sheffield artist Lucy Coyne contacted us back in March to be a sponsor of the steel city cascade, a stainless steel sculpture to be hung from the roof of the Sheffield Winter Gardens.
The project was collaboration between Lucy and various schools within Sheffield to design and fabricate a suspended sculpture. It is centre piece to the Sheffield Children’s Festival but also incorporates the 100 year stainless steel celebrations.
It not only is a great piece of art but also gave the children involved in making it an exciting experience of working with materials and methods not normally used within schools.
Stainless Sheet
The cascade was also sponsored by Rimex Metals and Outokumpu who donated stainless sheet for us to laser cut into the designs. The steel sheet we received was a between 0.7mm to 2mm thick and was in Bright Annealed, Bronze Speckle pattern and Check pattern. This was perfect to be cut by our fast fibre laser machine.
Designs
The designs were drawn by various children from different schools around Sheffield and relate to Sheffield’s history of stainless steel.
Designs include the various cutlery & stainless works around Sheffield, uses of stainless steel and people.
After the children’s designs were made on card we were able to scan them into our Laser QC machine, and after a bit of cleaning up, convert them to laser machine readable DXFs.
Sheffield Children’s Festival
The festival runs every year and finishes 6th July this year. The stainless steel cascade will be hung in the winter gardens until September.