The Department of Mechanical Engineering provides a variety of facilities and technical services to support students, faculty, and affiliates. Tech Spark is our newest set of collaborative workspaces for creative problem solving.
For service requests or problems with your lab or office, please contact Ed (412-268-2516) or Dottie (412-268-7241).
Mechanical Engineering faculty members maintain state of the art laboratories to explore research questions, innovate new technologies, and collaborate across disciplines.
The department prides itself on the facilities it maintains for research and testing. University and outside researchers may access these facilities:
The Tech Spark is the cornerstone of the College of Engineering's maker ecosystem, an integrated set of resources where faculty and students create and develop new ideas, concepts and products for courses and research. Visit the new Tech Spark website for details about equipment, hours of operation, contact information, and more: engineering.cmu.edu/techspark.
The Mechanical Engineering professional machine shop offers prototype design and fabrication services for the Mechanical Engineering Department as well as the campus at large.
Contact: 412-268-2516
The Air Quality Lab contains a wide array of equipment and instrumentation used to conduct laboratory experiments and field measurements related to air pollution, air quality, atmospheric chemistry, and investigate the impacts of particulate matter on human health and on climate change. Two environmental chamber reactors and associated equipment are the major facilities present. These are used to simulate atmospheric processing of gases and particles. Numerous analytical instruments are also available to characterize key gas-phase and particle-phase components and properties during these experiments.
Rate: $112.90 per user per month
Contact: Ryan Sullivan, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Chemistry
The Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies (CAPS) mobile laboratory is a facility for conducting air quality research off of Carnegie Mellon's campus. The CAPS mobile laboratory 1 is a custom-outfitted Ford E350 van. The CAPS mobile laboratory 2 is a custom-outfitted Ford E150 van. When fully equipped, they contain the same instrument suite as the Air Quality Laboratory located in Doherty Hall.
Rates:
Mobile Lab 1, 2008 Ford E350 Box Van: $109.10
Mobile Lab 2, 2007 Ford E150 Van: $0.607 per mile
Contact: Albert Presto, Research Professor of Mechanical Engineering
The Nano X-Ray CT facility provides user access to the Xradia UltraXRM-L200 nano-scale resolution X-ray computed tomography instrument and its associated sample preparation equipment and image processing software. The instrument is used to image the three-dimensional, internal structure of material samples.
Rates:
CMU & Federal Customers: $110 access fee + $50/hour with a daily billing cap of access fee + 15 hours
External Academic Customers: $200.20 access fee + $91/hour with a daily billing cap of access fee + 15 hours
Industry Customers: $379.50 access fee + $172.50/hour with a daily billing cap of access fee + 15 hours
Personnel fee for incidental costs for customers not self-operating the facility: $130.58 per hour
Contact: Shawn Litster, Professor of Mechanical Engineering
The Zygo NewView™ 7300 is a white light interferometer used for characterizing and quantifying surface roughness, step heights, critical dimensions, and other topographical features with excellent precision and accuracy. Measurements are non-contact, nondestructive, fast, and require no sample preparation.
Alicona™ InfiniteFocus G4 an optical 3D micro coordinate system for form and roughness measurement. Measurements achieve a vertical resolution of up to 10nm.
Keyence VHX 6000 is an optical 3D micro coordinate system for form and roughness measurement. The VHX-6000 can accurately observe the surface topography of a target with large peaks and valleys.
Park XE-70 Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) is a complete Atomic Force Microscope system for small and medium size samples, consisting of completely decoupled XY & Z scanners using flexure guided scan system for all three axes, closed/open-loop scan, zero background curvature XY flexure scanner, XE AFM scanning head, direct on-axis optics, high resolution digital CCD camera with digital zoom, manual Z focus stage, manual precision XY sample stage, electronics controller, software and cantilevers.
Rates: $70.54 per hour
Contact: Burak Ozdoganlar, Professor of Mechanical Engineering