It is now generally recognised that the old-fashioned method of teaching machine drawing is very unsatisfactory. In teaching by this method an undimensioned scale drawing, often of a very elaborate description, is placed before the student, who is required to copy it. Very often the student succeeds in making a good copy of the drawing placed before him without learning very much about the object represented by it, and this state of matters is sometimes not much improved by the presence of the teacher, who is often simply an art master, knowing nothing about machine design. It is related of one school that a pupil, after making a copy of a particular drawing, had a discussion with his teacher as to whether the object represented was a sewing machine or an electrical machine. Evidently the publisher of the drawing example in this case did not adopt the precaution which a backward student used at an examination in machine design: he put on a full title above his drawing, for the information of his examiner.

Now, if machine drawing is to be of practical use to any one, he must be able to understand the form and arrangement of the parts of a machine from an inspection of suitable drawings of them without seeing the parts themselves. Also he ought to be able to make suitable drawings of a machine or parts of a machine from the machine or the parts themselves.

In producing this work the author has aimed at placing before young engineers and others, who wish to acquire the skill and knowledge necessary for making the simpler working drawings such as are produced in engineers' drawing offices, a number of good exercises in drawing, sufficient for one session's work, and at the same time a corresponding amount of information on the design of machine details generally.

The exercises set are of various kinds. In the first and simplest certain views of some machine detail are given, generally drawn to a small scale, which the student is asked to reproduce to dimensions marked on these views, and he is expected to keep to these dimensions, and not to measure anything from the given illustrations. In the second kind of exercise the student is asked to reproduce certain views shown to dimensions given in words or in tabular form. In the third kind of exercise the student is required to make, in addition to certain views shown to given dimensions, others which he can only draw correctly if he thoroughly understands the design before him. In the fourth kind of exercise the student is asked to make the necessary working drawings for some part of a machine which has been previously described and illustrated, the dimensions to be calculated by rules given in the text.

The illustrations for this work are all new, and have been specially prepared by the author from working drawings, and he believes that they will be found to represent the best modern practice.

As exercises in drawing, those given in this book are not numbered exactly in their order of difficulty, but unless on the recommendation of a teacher, the student should take them up in the order given, omitting the following:—26, 27, 28, 35, 40, 42, 43, 45, 49, 50, 54, 60, 61, as he comes to them, until he has been right through the book; afterwards he should work out those which he omitted on first going over the book.

In addition to the exercises given in this work the student should practise making freehand sketches of machine details from actual machines or good models of them. Upon these sketches he should put the proper dimensions, got by direct measurement from the machine or model by himself. These sketches should be made in a note-book kept for the purpose, and no opportunity should be lost of inserting a sketch of any design which may be new to the student, always putting on the dimensions if possible. These sketches form excellent examples from which to make working drawings. The student should also note any rules which he may meet with for proportioning machines, taking care, however, in each case to state the source of such information for his future guidance and reference.

As machine drawing is simply the application of the principles of descriptive geometry to the representation of machines, the student of the former subject, if he is not already acquainted with the latter, should commence to study it at once.

D. A. L.

Glasgow: March 1887.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

To this edition another chapter has been added, containing a number of miscellaneous exercises, which it is hoped will add to the usefulness of the work as a text-book in science classes. The latest examination paper in machine drawing by the Science and Art Department has also been added to the Appendix.

D. A. L.

London: August 1888.