Support Facilities

The diversity of undergraduate, postgraduate and academic research taking place in the School requires access to a great variety of specialised facilities and resources. Fortunately, the School is well-equipped to meet these challenges with a solid backbone of facilites to support this work.

Workshop

Room locations: NG07, NG09, NG25

Contact Person: Mr I. Linke

The workshop is a small, multifunctional facility, providing day to day technical support to undergraduate and post-graduate laboratories. With its extensive range of lathes, mills, saws and a host of other common workshop apparatus, workshop technicians provide design assistance to staff and students, with particular emphasis on final year project students.

They are also involved in the hardware development of many cutting-edge, research-based projects. The workshop displays a wide range of diverse skills, enabling cross discipline versatility. Undergraduate students are encouraged to participate in the technical aspects of their projects and are tutored by the workshop staff in the safe and appropriate use of the facility and its resources.

The w orkshop staff and their areas of expertise include:

• Stuart Brand - Brushless DC machine design and control / Power engineering
• Bernard (Bernie) Dumuid - Electronics/Electrical
• Ian Linke - Composites and polymers / mechanical design (Workshop supervisor)
• Alban O'Brien - RF /electronics
• Brandon (Brad) Pullen - Mechanical design & machining

Circuit Board Production

Room location: N245

Contact Person: Mr. P. Simcik

The work undertaken by both undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as research staff, often results in new electronic designs. To facilitate the production of circuit boards for these designs, a computer controlled mill is operated onsite, allowing high printed circuit boards to be produced in very short time frames. A traditional etching process removes all the copper from a copper-clad board apart from that required for the circuit itself and takes some time; the milling process removes just enough copper to separate the elements of the circuit such as tracks and pads, making the process quick and efficient.

The quality of these boards is such that they are often used for the final version of a design, though the low cost of operation means they can also be used for developing prototypes. This ensures potential flaws or design changes can be identified and eliminated prior to a more expensive acid-etched production run.

Satellite Dish

Contact Person: Mr. S. Guest

One of the landmarks of the Engineering building is the satellite dish installed on the roof of the Engineering North building. The 3.8m diameter dish provides researchers with the ability to access exclusive worldwide services available only via satellite link.

Store

Room location: N226

Contact Person: Mr. D. Digiacomo

Student projects and research work draw heavily on electronic components, and the Store stocks an extensive range of common items such as resistors, capacitors and semiconductors which are available for 4th year student and staff use.