Donors, faculty, students and staff recently celebrated the opening of the modernized space

Thanks to donor support led by Virgil Elings, who spent twenty years on the UC Santa Barbara Physics faculty and co-founded Digital Instruments, a pioneer in developing and manufacturing the scanning probe electron microscope, the College of Engineering (COE) Machine Shop, officially called the Center for Engineering Innovation and Design (CEID), a source of valuable support to labs, faculty, and students, recently underwent a major renovation that transformed it into a modern design center.

Long the first stop for many COE faculty and students needing something built for a lab or an experiment, the shop is especially important to ME undergraduate students. About twenty teams of such students each year use the shop to design, build and test their senior capstone projects, probably the single most important accomplishment in their undergraduate careers.

“In engineering, we do a lot with numbers, and we do a lot with physics and mathematics,” said Tyler Susko, undergraduate dean in the ME department and the capstone instructor. “It’s turning those numbers into physical things that makes us mechanical engineers, whether students design rockets or cars or whatever they may do in their careers. When I ask our graduates who are in the job market what they talked about in a job interview, about ninety-nine percent of the time, they say, ‘the capstone project and the thing I built at UCSB.’ Having this facility will change dramatically how we can teach our students and make that experience even more important.”

The project, which will ultimately increase usable space by 35 percent, is being conducted in phases as funds become available. Phase 1 work included removing old equipment and installing eleven new CNC (computer numerical control) machine tools, 3D printers, a laser cutter, electronics fabrication and testing, pneumatics and hydraulics fabrication and testing, and bench and storage space. Phase II included enclosing the space with glass garage doors and installing keyless entry for students to access the bench workspace and provide security during extended hours, especially at night.

“The newer technology and the other elements of this important renovation aid students greatly in their capstone projects, allow them to work better as teams in a safe and productive manner, and enhance the College of Engineering’s competitiveness with other top institutions,” said shop superintendent, Marty Ramirez. 

Such a modern design center, says Susko,“will introduce students to CNC machining in their freshman year and augment their understanding of those tools in subsequent classes before engaging in the year-long capstone project. We always have safety on our mind, of course, and the new CNC tools are fully enclosed, removing the danger of exposed spinning cutters. The new tools will enable them to create things that were unfeasible in previous years.”

Looking around at all the state-of-the-art equipment at a dedication event, COE dean, Umesh Mishra, said “Mechanical engineering is the broadest field in engineering, and it has always been that way. The most important thing about the machine shop, I believe, is the potential it brings. You can’t know what’s in a person’s mind unless they actually express it. A machine shop is a place for expression, and it can bring out the genius in a person, so, I’m very excited about this.”