Man of Steel

Art, science, technology and culture: Steve Mehdi’s project wants to comprehensively highlight the strong cultural bond between the South Yorkshire region and the metalworking and mining industries. When complete, Mehdi’s work will be over 90 feet tall and it will be located in Sheffield, next to one of the main junctions of the M1, not far from the University Campus where the prestigious AMRC Research Centre Boeing is located, specialised in researching innovative materials. The project is the result of an active cooperation between the sculptor and the University. The AMRC helped Steve Mehdi to produce his sculpture prototype with specialised composite materials (polyurethane resins) using 5-axes machining centres by CMS. This work wants to pay homage to the long coal mining and steel production history of South Yorkshire, but it also wants to offer a moment of reflection on what will the future bring to this region and its strong industrial vocation. The sculpture will represent a timeless, archetypal and strongly symbolic figure. 

Once completed, the work will consist of a 60 foot stainless steel figure, sat on a black 55 foot square plinth, recalling the colour of coal. The project received significant support from local businesses and from the University. “This project,” explained Steve Mehdi, “honours the past and embraces the future, combining the heritage of old   and underlining the importance of new technologies, thanks also to the applied research activities carried out by AMRC. The Man of Steel would not exist without this collaboration.” The model is almost 9 foot tall and is made of polyurethane resin boards, a material normally used for creating prototypes and models of structures in the automotive and aerospace industries. It was then cut and shaped by AMRC using CMS cutting centres. But first of all, the researchers of the Geometric Modelling Department of the Sheffield Hallam University used laser scanning technology to obtain a 3D prototype with five million data points, which were then transferred to the CMS machine, which due to its unique CMS Adaptive Contouring Capability was able to cut the model with total precision and high speed. The composite material model was then clad with steel and mounted on a 9 foot plinth.