MIE Innovation Shop

The Innovation Shop includes social and conference areas to facilitate collaboration and collegiality, and general purpose project space which students can use for design prototyping, small scale experimentation, or for mechatronics development. This area is also used for mechatronics course lab work. Capstone design students use the shop to construct project prototypes and junior students in our component design course, MIE 313, use the facility to fabricate design contest prototypes.

The shop is heavily used by students working on Supermileage vehicle projects and by students working on a range of independent research or design projects such as the NASA rocket design competition.

The professionals in the shop instruct groups of students enrolled in particular classes and individual students in the safe and proper use of machine tools and monitor student activities in the shop. The part of the shop which houses machine tools and higher power tools such as table saws is open to students when the professional staff is present, nominally 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on weekdays. The rest of the shop is open to students 24 hours/day, 7 days/week and is monitored by closed circuit television.