Shop Facilities at school

[M3Shark]

Hi everyone,
I am wondering what your teams facilities at school are like? How big is your workshop? What tools do you have at your disposal withen your actual workshop? Did the school provide them for you or did your team have to buy them with sponsorship money?
What is your access like to your schools machine shop? are you allowed access whenever you want or only when someone else is there? Are you allowed to use all tools and machines there? What tools does your schools machine shop have?

I am particularly interested in the various CSU's and UC schools, but would like to find out others as well.

Thank you.

[M3Shark]

Hi everyone,
I am wondering what your teams facilities at school are like? How big is your workshop? What tools do you have at your disposal withen your actual workshop? Did the school provide them for you or did your team have to buy them with sponsorship money?
What is your access like to your schools machine shop? are you allowed access whenever you want or only when someone else is there? Are you allowed to use all tools and machines there? What tools does your schools machine shop have?

I am particularly interested in the various CSU's and UC schools, but would like to find out others as well.

Thank you.

[Adambomb]

We have shop "space" that is given to us, that we have basically have total control over and full access to. Which of course means we are also responsible for keeping it full of tools and machinery. We bought one basic 2-axis CNC mill and a low-end lathe, plus have an old bridgeport mill and an ancient WWII era lathe that we call the "Navy Lathe." (the operators manual said U.S. Navy if I remember right). Outside of that, just the basics, drill presses, band saws, hand power tools, mostly ancient. Also a big CNC router we got from somebody on campus (for free if I remember right). We paid for pretty much all of it with sponsorship money.

As far as access to the school's machining facilities, that is almost solely dependent on who you're dealing with. Luckily the tech in charge of the ME dept. machine shops, heat treat labs, etc. also happens to be one of our advisors, and we can generally get access to those facilities during normal business hours. Outside of that a lot of the other head lab techs in other departments are pretty helpful too and will work with you.

In the end I would consider this arrangement pretty much ideal in terms of us having total control over our shop space. I've found the more the university has to do with it, the more red tape you get wrapped up in, and the less you can get done productively.

[Brian S]

We have our shop, which has hand tools, hand held power tools, and three welders. Everything in it is paid for through sponsorship money, but we are lucky enough to have a sponsor that believes in having good tools and each year gives us some operating funds and some 'tool money' that as the name implies has to be spent on tools.

The ME student machine shop is next door and has two manual mills and three lathes. This year they added a old Bridgeport Series 1 mill, but the controller was useless so we just finished retrofitting on a PC based controller. We haven't cut any real parts yet, but it looks promising.

Each officer has a key to both of these shops so we get 24 hour access.

The back part of the ME shop (different room) has sheet metal working stuff that we can use during business hours. There is also the main engineering shop which we can't work in, but we do get half of the standard shop rate. We mostly just have them rough out parts on the waterjet.

[kapps]

Back in '99, our Formula and Baja teams moved into a 'shop' on campus that we shared with a professor who did some serious engine research. We have MIG/TIG welders, a Tree and Bridgeport mill (both need some work), three lathes (1 1/2 of which actually work), a 3 axis CNC, vertical and horizontal bandsaws,, pipe bender, break/shear, and various hand tools. From what I understand we were able to get most of the equipment purchased or donated by sponsors. Although everything except the CNC has a school tag on it. Last year, we had a second CNC donated but it wasn't working and we haven't been able to get very far with it. Several of us work for a big Engineering company and were able to get a proposal through to donate excess or used tooling to us. Most officers have a key to the shop and we have access 24/7. This year, we also have a guy who has started working in the machine shop in the ME department. He has access to a few other lathes and another lighter duty CNC mill.

[Wesley]

We've got a fairly well equipped machine shop, CNC mill, CNC mini-mill, CNC lathe, a bunch of crappy chinese vertical mills, three manual lathes, a couple shears (one monstrous one) and MIG/ 2 TIG welders, and most important, 24 hour access, which is wonderful.

Our actual team shop has a broken band saw, a TIG welder, a bench grinder, hand tools, and a drill. And a fan. A big fan.

[Goob]

we have a decent shop at our disposal. it runs normal business hours(they stay open til 8 a few nights a week when coming down to the wire to get the formula and baja cars done). one of the guys that runs the shop or the director of labs has to be there if we want to work in it.

as far as machines go, we have access to a lot of stuff. there's a slew of basics like 3 bench grinders, 3 band saws(2 vertical, 1 horizontal), and sanders. there's also a mig and a tig welder, a plasma cutter(that i've never seen anyone use yet), various sheet metal cutters benders and rollers, 3 working lathes, a broken lathe and a cnc lathe no one knows how to use yet, 2 standard mills, a standard mill with a cnc conversion, and a milltronics 3-axis.

most of the machines were donated or purchased used long before i went to school here. if we could get our acts together earlier than 2 months before competition, we really could put together a decent car considering all that we have access to.

[M3Shark]

thanks guys.

Our current workshop is slated to be knocked down sometime this year buy the engineering department. we are working with them to try to find a new place and i was curious as to who other schools shops look like.

any chance for some rough dimensions as to how big you shop space actually is? do you have to share it with other student/faculty projects?

Any schools want to share some pics?

-Thank you again.

[Adambomb]

Ours is somewhere on the order of 40' x 40', with an extra storage room something like 20' x 30' (not supposed to spend more than 1 hour at a time there due to radiation). We share our space with Baja and ASME HPV. Also have an office/computer lab that is about 12' x 25'.

We've just recently been threatened of being kicked out too, dreading the day it may finally come. Good luck getting your stuff figured out. You know, sounds like this is a somewhat common problem, perhaps we should all pool our resources, maybe put some sort of presentation together outlining exactly what a competitive FSAE team needs.

[wutzu]

Here at Cal Poly SLO we have:
ME "Hangar" Machine Shop (100'x100', half of that usable) :
4 Manual Mills, 1 CNC
4 Manual Lathes, 1 CNC
Horizontal and vertical bandsaws, media blasting booth
MIG,TIG,Stick welding, Heat Treat Oven, Optically guided Plasma Cutter
CNC Router Booth (5'x10' for layup molds)
Paint Booth
"Cage" Areas for Formula, Baja, Hybrid team equipment and cars.
Big trailer to haul cars and tools to competition
Dyno

Plus another brand new ME machine shop that's in the middle of campus and two more for the Industrial Technology and Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering departments which we probably can't get access to.

For the two ME machine shops, they're nominally open 32 hours a week for students, but a good portion of the shop employees are in SAE, so we have de facto 24-hour access as competition gets close.

[Dash]

At Mississippi State University, we have a "big shop" and a "little shop" the two are connected by a smaller room with a desk area.

The big shop, which we only have access to from 7-5 M-F houses a bandsaw, horizontal mill, break press, 1 manual mill, 1 manual lathe.

The small shop, which some of the team members have unlimited access to, has 1 manual mill, 1 manual lathe, and a tig welder, and holds most of our tools.

A few people work at a research park here on campus, and have limited access to their shop, which includes One Cnc mill, a bandsaw, mig welder, manual lathe, manual mill, surface grinder, and some various other tools.