Władysław Łuszczkiewicz was an art historian, artist, pedagogue, an outstanding personality of nineteenth-century Krakow, active in many fields. He was a professor at the Cracow School of Fine Arts, and in the years 1857–1873 and 1893–1895 he was the headmaster of this school. He was a teacher of many artists, of which it is enough to mention only the greatest — Jan Matejko, Stanisław Wyspiański, Józef Mehoffer and Artur Grottger. In 1883, Łuszczkiewicz was appointed the director of the National Museum in Krakow. He managed this institution until his death, that is until 1900.

Among the oldest source materials belonging to the Archive of the National Museum in Krakow, we can find the correspondence of former students of the School of Fine Arts addressed directly to their former teacher — Professor Łuszczkiewicz, who was at this time the director of the National Museum in Krakow. Based on selected letters, the article presents their interesting subject matter and presents the issues in which the students wrote to their Master. The attempt to describe the relation between former students and their master revealed in letters will be made.

The modern companies, which are competing on product market, need to use innovative solutions, in order to become potential leaders. One of the modernization methods is rearrangement of organizational structure and redistribution of competence. The article describes the Advanced Manufacturing Engineering Department in production plant, which is an innovative initiative in worldwide organizational management. Some aspects including AME application in plant processes are highlighted. Some advanced techniques are presented. In the article summary, perspectives for the development of AME are included.

World Class Manufacturing system consists of ten technical and ten managerial pillars.

These, impacting directly and indirectly on each other, generate the flow of internal processes. Two of the mentioned pillars, Early Product Management (EPM) and Cost Deployment

(CD) play a special role in the system, because they create a future strategic management

of a company influencing design engineering, manufacturing and economy [1, 2]. Referring

to the author’s previous publications on Early Product Management methodology [3, 4], the

role of Cost Deployment pillar in the new product launch remains an important issue. Additionally, there is a noticeable lack of publications in this specific field of the WCM system.

Therefore, a proper understanding of the relationship between these two technical pillars

is the basis for effective project management for the implementation of new products. In

this article, the correlation between EPM and CD will be highlighted whereas some critical

remarks will be indicated. The main part of the article will describe: the current approach to

project management according to the standards set by the WCM system and recommended

improvements originated from EPM and CD pillars. The quality scientific methods used in

this article are based on a case study of internal processes in an international plant specializing in agriculture machinery production and include elements of direct observation and

theoretical analysis and synthesis. This paper refers to the presented issues in practical terms

on the example of the methodology of managing of new launch product projects in terms of

cost management. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the problem of the cost

factor generated during the design phase and early implementation of the new product into

production, which will enable effective cost management of new implementation projects.

Studying the long history of the Gypsies on Polish territory refutes the commonly- held stereotypes about this ethnic minority, and can aid in overcoming them.

Electric energy meters are designed to account energy under sinusoidal and nonsinusoidal conditions, because both, old and new standards for energy meters require testing their accuracy under different conditions. The latest EN 50470 standard increases the range of meter testing under nonsinusoidal conditions, introducing new shapes of test signals such as the phase fired waveform or the burst fired waveform. This paper discusses calibration problems of electronic revenue energy meters for direct connection and for connection through current transformers, and it proposes a new calibration procedure which reproduces normal operating conditions better: three-phase configurations of measurement systems, load range during meter testing or shapes of test signals. Recently, modern Electrical Power Standards, also known as Power Calibrators, enable automatic testing of various types of electrical devices, including electricity meters in their normal operating conditions. This article presents examples of single and multi position fully automatic test systems, which employ Power/Energy Calibrator from Poland as the precision source with programmed waveforms of three phase voltages up to 560 V and currents up to 120 A conforming to EN 50470, or with random waveforms generated by PC software random wave generator. Measurement uncertainty of the energy meters under different nonsinusoidal conditions using a test system with reference to accuracy of the power calibrator or to the reference meter, are discussed.

Comparative analysis of test results for different shapes of voltage and current signals is presented in the conclusions of this paper.

This study investigates listeners’ perceptual responses in audio-visual interactions concerning binaural spatial audio. Audio stimuli are coupled with or without visual cues to the listeners. The subjective test participants are tasked to indicate the direction of the incoming sound while listening to the audio stimulus via loudspeakers or headphones with the head-related transfer function (HRTF) plugin. First, the methodology assumptions and the experimental setup are described to the participants. Then, the results are presented and analysed using statistical methods. The results indicate that the headphone trials showed much higher perceptual ambiguity for the listeners than when the sound is delivered via loudspeakers. The influence of the visual modality dominates the audio-visual evaluation when loudspeaker playback is employed. Moreover, when the visual stimulus is present, the headphone playback pattern of behavior is not always in response to the loudspeaker playback.

This article considers the problem of the rise in temperature of the windings of an induction motor during start-up. Excessive growth of thermal stresses in the structure of a cage winding increases the probability of damage to the winding of the rotor. For the purpose of analysis of the problem, simplified mathematical relationships are given, enabling the comparison of quantities of energy released in a rotor winding during start-up by different methods. Also, laboratory tests were carried out on a specially adapted cage induction motor enabling measurement of the temperature of a rotor winding during its operation. Because there was no possibility of investigating motors in medium- and high-power drive systems, the authors decided to carry out tests on a low-power motor. The study concerned the start-up of a drive system with a 4 kW cage induction motor. Changes in the winding temperature were recorded for three cases: direct online start-up, soft starting, and the use of a variable-frequency drive (VFD). Conclusions were drawn based on the results obtained. In high-power motors, the observed phenomena occur with greater intensity, because of the use of deep bar and double cage rotors. For this reason, indication is made of the particular need for research into the energy aspects of different start-up methods for medium- and high-power cage induction motors in conditions of prolonged start-up.

The paper presents the results of the experimental tests of Mg/Al bimetallic bars rolling process in classic and multi-radial modified round-oval-round passes. The bimetallic bar consist of magnesium core, grade AZ31 and aluminium outer layer, grade 1050A. The stocks were round bars with diameter 22.5 mm with an aluminium layer share of 28%. As a result of rolling in four passes, bars of a diameter of about 17 mm were obtained. A bimetallic feedstock was manufactured using an explosive welding method. The use of the designed arrangement of multi-radial modified stretching passes resulted in obtaining Mg/Al bimetallic bars with an uniform distribution of the cladding layer over the bar perimeter and high quality of shear strength between individual layers compared to Mg/Al bars obtained in the classic passes.

A numerical analysis of the process of single-pass rolling of AZ31 magnesium alloy bars in the three-high skew rolling mill has been carried out in the study. Based on the obtained investigation results, the effect of rolling speed on the band twist and the state of stress and strain occurring in the rolled band has been determined. From the obtained results of the numerical studies it has been found that with the increase in rolling speed the unit band twist angle θ, increase, which translates into an increase in the value of tangential stress in the axial zone of the rolled bar. This contributes directly to an increase in redundant strain in the rolled bar axial zone, which brings about a structure refinement. To verify the effect of rolling speed on the flow pattern and the stress and strain state, experimental tests were carried out. It has been found from the tests that the band twist (flow pattern) contributes to obtaining a bimodal structure in the bar cross-section.

This study presents results of stress rupture test of MAR-M-509 cobalt alloy samples, as-cast and after surface refining with a concentrated stream of heat. Tests were conducted on samples of MAR-M-509 alloy castings, obtained using the lost-wax method. Casting structure refining was performed with the GTAW method in argon atmosphere, using the current I = 200 A and electrical arc scanning velocity vs = 100, 150, 200 and 250 mm/min. The effect of rapid resolidification of the MAR-M-509 alloy on the microstructure was examined and significant improvement in stress rupture test was observed.

The paper presents results of examination of material parameters of cast iron with structure obtained under rapid resolidification conditions carried out by means of the nanoindentation method.