From Engineering News, September 15, 2006 Vol. 77, no. 5F

On September 7, the ME department hosted an open house to introduce its improved student machine shop. Eighteen months in the making, the up-graded shop, located in 1166 Etcheverry Hall, features 15 new machines and a rearranged layout. The shop will accommodate more students than before and make it easier for classes and clubs to complete projects in a timely manner, say shop personnel.

Senior lab mechanician Gordon Long and his co-worker Mick Franssen were in charge of the upgrade. “We have three new milling machines, six new lathes with digital readouts and six new drill presses,” Long says. “We were closed over the summer so we could reconfigure the shop and move the new machines in. The feedback we’ve gotten from students is it was worth the wait. They love it. The size of the space hasn’t changed but it feels bigger."

The shop is an essential resource for students who machine projects for classes and research as well as car competition teams who manufacture parts there. “It’s great for us because with expanded facilities we don’t have to wait to use machines,” says ME junior Sarah Scott, who is president of the Super Mileage Vehicle Team. “All in all, it was definitely worth waiting.”

The project got started a year and a half ago, says ME department chair Al Pisano, when students told him they wanted a better shop to do hands-on projects. “UC Berkeley is known for its theoretical research, but more and more students are seeing the value of gaining practical skills, and that was enough motivation for me to get this upgrade going. Students wanted it and they’re the market.” Along with rounding up resources from ME, Pisano convinced the NE department to donate a couple of its machines and the CEE department to chip in some funds. Now, he estimates, the shop is a half million-dollar facility. NE and CEE students will be able to use the shop along with ME affiliates, researchers and students in project-based classes. All students must complete five hours of training on machine use and safety.

Pisano himself worked in a machine shop as a graduate student to earn money on the side. From the skills he learned there, he went on to build his own apparatus for his Ph.D. research. The experience was personally empowering, he says, and he encourages engineers to try it out.

Information on shop training

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