The University’s Technical Science Administration has two shops engaged in making equipment that doesn’t exist, in the words of electronics shop supervisor Cliff Dax. The machine shop and electronics shop, sometimes in collaboration, build equipment for the University’s scientific projects.
“The things we build, at least
95 percent of the time, are not available anywhere else,” machine shop supervisor John Boosinger said. “You could have them made somewhere else, but it would be extremely
expensive, prohibitively so.”
The electronics shop
“We’ve really done things for every department on campus,” electronics shop instrument technician Rick Gasser said.
Six or seven years ago, the electronics shop built the lights for the DPS call boxes around campus, Dax said.
“It was not as simple as a light-emitting diode in a piece of plastic,” he said, recounting the difficulty of running mile-long telephone
wire underground.
A more recent product is a device resembling a pager that records subject responses for a study the psychology and political science departments conducted on decision-making. Another is a high-voltage amplifier to reduce building vibrations during the physics department’s experiments with quantum dots.
Dax is currently developing an antenna amplifier for the University’s MRI machine so the machine will be able to deliver higher resolution brain scans.
“We’re going to experiment on this in the next couple weeks, and if it works, it’ll turn the industry right on its ear,” Dax said.
The electronics shop is also involved in the geology department’s research on volcanoes. Based on the porosity of a given pumice rock, Gasser said, researchers want to be able to determine what kind of stresses it was subjected to and therefore gauge the likelihood and severity of a possible volcanic eruption.
“The instrument doesn’t exist, so we’re creating it,” Gasser said.
The electronics shop’s duties also include repairing laboratory
equipment such as microscopes
and spectrometers.
“These machines cost over a million dollars a piece, and someone has to keep them running,” Dax said.
The machine shop
“Probably the most interesting thing about this shop is the variety of work we do … the way we operate as the backbone of all the experimentation that’s going on throughout the science department,” Boosinger said. Current projects at the machine shop include acrylic tubes for sampling mud flats, laser equipment and cryogenics. Boosinger described cryogenics as work with liquid helium, “a superfluid with a lot of very bizarre properties.” “Some of it is actually top secret,” Boosinger said regarding the shop’s work with cryogenics.
However, a project that will soon be out in the open is a series of welded metal frames with glass panes, which will be hung from Lawrence Hall’s fourth floor facing Franklin Boulevard. The panels are part of a study on day lighting.
“People come in the door with an idea rather than blueprints, and we help develop from scratch what it is they’re after,” Boosinger said.
The machine shop also builds demonstrations for physics and chemistry classes.
Boosinger said he began working at the machine shop while he was an undergraduate architecture student.
“When I came in the door, I
didn’t have a lot of background,” he said. “I just spent a lot of time here asking questions.”
After he graduated about a year and a half ago, Boosinger was hired full-time at the shop . The machine shop, which is currently fully staffed, employs two students, including sophomore physics major Jeffrey Garman.
“Working with the students is very, very helpful,” Garman said, explaining that many of the graduate students he works with have taken the same physics classes in which he’s currently enrolled.
Garman added that he gets new assignments from graduate students and professors every week. Currently, he is manufacturing parts for lasers.
“You learn a little bit more with every part you make,” Garman said.

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