Laboratory experiment apparatus. Who builds them?

[StewartParticipant @gaunless]

Hi all.

I’ve always wondered who builds the devices you see in pictures of lab experiments, such as the one in the link below for Bose-Einstein condensates.

Obviously a lot of stainless steel etc, requiring much machining. Who usually comes up with the design, and then who builds the things? What happens to the devices when the project is over?

Stew.

 

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

University teaching facilities usually have a few techs maintaining the teaching aids and then the more complex equipment used by PhD students and researchers. Some will be skilled operators recruited from local industry. Just like in any factory they gather skills and experience but are probably normally building from sketches. I don’t recall seeing a drawing office designing everything like in industry.
Stand alone institutes and companies developing experimental apparatus are often close to a university so probably often recruit their skilled techs from there.

[StewartParticipant @gaunless]

‘Building from sketches’ fascinating! I would love to see the whole process. I mean there’s things like the LHC at CERN at the top end, but I find the devices used for smaller experiments just as intriguing. I think I may have taken the wrong career direction 🤔

I wonder if they are more experimental than they look? I mean to the outsider they look very impressive, but I wonder if there is quite a lot of jury rigging etc. I can imagine modifications having to be made quite often. And then there’s research budgets I guess. I wonder if they are made ‘just good enough’ ? If you’re being sponsored by GSK or someone like that then I can imagine money being trivial.

[John MCParticipant @johnmc39344]

That would be me!  I spent around 10 years working in a science environment dreaming up all sorts of weird and wonderful bits of kit working alongside some highly skilled scientific types.  I found it to be totally absorbing work.

Our efforts always seemed to start off looking like well thought pieces of work that very soon changed into something Heath-Robinson as the experiments progressed!

Thanks to the huge progress made in computers, this sort of work and the sort of people able to do it are diminishing, a great shame, but that’s progress.

 

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

Although is the US I believe Tom Lipton of Oxtools on YouTube does it for a living.

H

[Andrew TinsleyParticipant @andrewtinsley63637]

I always built my own experimental apparatus, even the very large items. That is why I developed a liking for welding and machining.

I found it quicker and cheaper than trying to outsource equipment building.

Andrew.

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

Universities and other research establishments will also commission manufacturers of similar commercial equipment to make “specials” That was certainly the case when I worked in that industry. We didn’t make much, if any profit on them. However they led to enough follow-on work or even new product lines to be worthwhile.

High vacuum rigs like the one shown and optical set-ups are often made from standard off-the shelf parts. The vacuum ones bolt together or use clamped flanges with seals.  Very nice but also expensive.
The slotted aluminium extrusion is also popular for custom machines. It’s sometimes called a machine building system. Meccano for grown-ups 🙂

They often end up in disposal sales and are a great source for parts IF you have tha means to collect them and the space to take them apart.

Robert.

Robert.

 

[StewartParticipant @gaunless]

Ah. Great stuff. Thanks all. I always wondered who made it all. I guess there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye. Such as repeatability of results, so the setup itself isn’t affecting readings and skewing data and so on.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

I have 3 friends who did such work, one of who fuelled my interest in experimental work.  I don’t make models or build kits!

Two spent their careers in Universities, the third became a school technician in a Technical Academy after BT made him redundant.  Dead now poor chap.

The universities had well-equipped workshops, full access to materials of all sorts, and contacts with academic, government and industry R&D worldwide.  Reasonable budgets, and often funded by industry to develop innovations.  The work varied from making simple parts up to complicated assemblies, and anything seriously difficult could be outsourced.  Occasionally worked with components, materials and techniques not available outside an R&D establishment.   Outside the workshop, the university had loads of other equipment: electron microscope?  No problem!   Sulphuric Acid by the ton, liquid Helium, full on Technical library, mathematicians, chemical, electronic, electrical, mechanical and other engineers – not difficult.   Not all rainbows and lollipops though – plenty of petty squabbles, egos, and theoreticians unwilling to accept experimental results contrary to their ideas.  Obviously the idiots who built the experiment must be wrong, not the bloke who designed it, or came up with a duff idea!

School technician’s experience was mixed.  Problem was the Head wasn’t interested in technology and progressively diverted time,  funds and talent away from it.  A Technical Academy in name only, the problem being that politicians rarely bother to check that the systems they are responsible for deliver as intended.  Ofsted seem only to check exams are being passed, not caring if a naughty Technical Academy churned out Historians rather than Mathematicians.   He expected lots of work supporting the kids, actually most days he was left to potter happily in a well equipped workshop.  Rarely used the metal-working tools because electronics and 3D-printing kept him amused until he retired.  To his knowledge, the Denford CNC lathe had only been fired up once to prove it worked after installation…

Dave

 

 

 

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Some laboratories purchase work from contract engineering and electronics companies.

One such I worked for long ago, was an electronics company that had a small mechanical-engineering workshop, and this did make parts for customers.

Though the “drawings” from one government research organisation were so ropey the workshop staff called the customer “The Muppet Labs”, after the TV show current at the time. Typically we received low-grade photocopies of pencil sketches on graph-paper so the first task was to discern outline from dimension-line from graph-grid. Then create what could kindly be called “improvised” – not improvised by us but by the scientists who fancied themselves as mechanical-engineering designers on the side

On the other hand when I later joined a totally different Scientific Civil Service organisation as a laboratory assistant, all of our test-pieces whether made internally or externally, were made to professionally-drawn, proper designs. Part of my work was assembling experimental prototypes – and testing them.

What happened to them afterwards? Many accumulated in assorted dark corners. Others were dismantled for scrap or salvage, where feasible, which was not always.  One large-scale experiment, before my time, involved a number of large, ovoid fibreglass casings about six feet high. Allegedly these were eventually sold or donated to a clay-pigeon company for use as shelters on the range itself!

[mike barrett 1Participant @mikebarrett1]

around Cambridge lots of small specialised companies not only working for the University but also for all the medical and research companies in the area.
When I worked for Schlumberger Cambridge research and we used this company a  lot. That drilling machine was ours 🙂
https://huxleybertram.com/portfolio-item/test-rig-machine/

 

mike

[george baker 1Participant @georgebaker1]

Hi

Over 30 years since I worked in a University.  The Mech Eng department workshop behind our building  put used experimental rigs outside the back door (Elec Eng did the same but it was a walk away) prior to disposal. Then chunks of it evaporated,  some sublimed into my garage.

George

[John PurdyParticipant @johnpurdy78347]

Before joining the airforce I worked for a university pharmacology department as one of three lab techs. We had a small workshop in the department with a Unimat SL with many accessories plus other hand tools which we used to make small experimental devices, mostly in perspex and/or aluminum. I also made some electronic monitoring devices for the experiments, usually from scribbled sketches from one of the 3 PhDs I worked for. There was a large very well equipped machine shop in the basement that made any large or complex items, only visited it once. Was interesting work.
When I left I was told by the department head, Dr. Ling, that if the airforce didn’t work out my job was waiting for me, so I must have done something right.
I went back about a year later after I got my wings and learned that Dr. Ling had died of a brain tumor a few months earlier, he was only in his late 40s, early 50s.
John

[Morse HomologyParticipant @morsehomology91685]

A lot of parts are off the shelf from Kurt Lesker; google “conflat flanges,” quite a few of which are visible in your image. Main vacuum chambers, usually an outside contractor makes ’em, or if you’re at a national lab, there is an engineering team which does it for you. For large/complex chambers usually there’s some guy with a solid works license talking to you, but as late as the 90s people would just draw it up on graphing paper and hand it over to the machinist who has to make it.

All kinds of art around making vacuum chambers. One of my favorites (I used it once) was using aluminum foil gaskets between shallow knife edges; worked where you need very high temperature bake outs (you need to bake the vacuum chamber to get all the gas out of the machined surfaces). Was developed during the Mercury program. The usual conflat system uses a gasket made of oxygen free high conductivity copper (on different knife edges), which is only good to around 450C.

Grad students and researchers also go into the machine shop and make their own doodads when they need them. I did anyway. Big things, not so much, unless they’ve been at it for a long time.

A nice book for old timey physics experimental apparatus is John Strong’s Procedures in Experimental Physics:

https://archive.org/details/ProceduresInExperimentalPhysics

Author invented aluminizing process for telescope mirrors. Also built a diffraction grating ruling engine with a very talented basement machinist (you can find these on scihub using DOI’s like this: https://sci-hub.ru/10.1364/JOSA.41.000003):
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24950715
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24950709
https://opg.optica.org/viewmedia.cfm?r=1&rwjcode=josa&uri=josa-41-1-3&seq=0&html=true

Fun stuff for people interested in ultimate precision engineering; world’s most accurate screws types of things.

[Wade BeattyParticipant @wadebeatty78296]

University auction sites, if you can find them are often gold mines of obscure equipment that is let go to make room for new kit. Materials are also sold for bargin prices.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Disposal – in the early ’90s at the end of a MoD project I had some special test equipment to get rid of that had cost about £300k but was paid for by the MoD and written off so selling or even recovering parts was not permitted. The normal process was to physically smash it up and provide proof of such to our paymasters. However in this case I was able to get permission to give most of it to one of the London Universities electronics department.

We have some interesting skill sets and experiences on this forum. In 40 years our successors will be saying – ‘yeah we got some off the shelf from China and anything special was 3D printed – in China’.

[S KParticipant @sk20060]

Most of the crazy custom experimental apparatus like that are built by Ph.D. students under the supervision of their advisors (their professors).

Most higher-tier Universities do have facilities such as a machine shop, where professionals can make things that students can’t, or which would be dangerous for a student to do (there have been some tragic – including fatal – accidents when students have access to powerful equipment). However, professionals usually costs money that comes out of research budgets, and it’s avoided when possible, since grad students are cheaper. And also, those shops normally can’t build an entire apparatus like that anyway.

National laboratories, on the other hand, employ higher-skilled professionals, and have better facilities that can do much more, and which grad students normally participate in too.

Huge experiments like at the LHC, where hundreds or thousands of things like superconducting magnets are needed, also employ large consulting and construction companies. But the researchers are usually control freaks that want to be in charge of everything anyway.

A job as a technician or a machinist, etc., at a national laboratory or at an R1 university is usually a great position to be in. Sane working conditions, interesting projects, and all that.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

We had a well equipped workshop with highly skilled artisans to do the clever stuff. Very useful when I bent the forks on my motor bike, and they kept my personal tutor’s pre war lagonda car going, making spares as required. If you showed any aptitude they were keen to develop your skills. We were engineering students after all

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