Material Science and Engineering Research Laboratories

There are several labs that make up this suite. The lab in Room 1258 is used to section, mount and polish metallographic specimens, as well as chemically etch and prepare specimens for optical microscopy and mechanical testing. The equipment in the room includes: a fume hood, fluid-cooled abrasive cutoff wheel, low-speed diamond wafering saw, two metprep manual polishing wheels, a sonicator cleaning bath and a Vibromet2 Vibratory Polisher. Facilities include desiccating storage cabinets for metallographic specimens, and stations for epoxy mounting and vacuum storage of specimens. In addition, two low resolution optical microscopes are available for mid-polishing sample inspections. The lab in Room 1259 contains equipment used for obtaining mechanical property data from materials. The lab is used primarily for research, but is often used in demonstrations and data presentation to the materials courses on the undergraduate and graduate level. The room houses an Instron 3369 Screw Driven Tensile Tester, a Qualitest QV-100o Vickers Microhardness machine and various Rheomter and torsional test equipment (teaching grade, not used in research). And finally, the lab in Room 1261 contains two optical microscopes used for characterization of materials fracture surfaces and microstructures. The room is large, and equipped with a project which is configured to the image acquisition computers for each of the microscopes, so demonstrations for up to 20 students or visitors can take place. The two microscopes are a MEIJI Stereo Zoom Optical Microscope, and Nikon Epiphot inverted metallograph, equipped with automated extended depth of focus control and Nikon Image Capture and Image Analysis software suite.