6.1 Physics and Astronomy Shops and Services

Please direct comments to Carl Michal.

Along with IT support, the Department provides skilled technical and shops support. Presently, the shops include the main machine shop with six full-time technicians, equipped with computer controlled lathe and milling machine, the electronics shop with a supervising engineer and three technicians, the well-equipped and supervised (50% by one of the 6 shop technicians) student machine shop, and the shared-technical services facility that provides liquid helium, maintenance of research equipment, and limited glass-blowing services.

Use of the shops costs researchers $10/hr for technician's time with materials provided at or near cost.

The Department also has its own store room with a part-time store-keeper providing consumables and electrical and mechanical parts.

6.1.1 Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats

6.1.1.1 Strengths:

• The people!
• Skilled technicians, high quality work
• Well equipped machine and student shops
• Good connections between shops (e.g., construction of balloon gondola).
• Variety of services provided: the shops will take a project from conception to finished product, or will help faculty or students with any step along the way.
• Training of students in student shop

6.1.1.2 Weaknesses:

• Budget cuts have forced some contraction in the services provided. STS is down to one technician from two. The glass shop is all but closed.
• physical separation of different shops in different areas hinders sharing of equipment.
• some duplication of services and equipment between shops and STS. Consolidation of STS with the other services should be considered.

6.1.1.3 Opportunities

• The upcoming influx of new faculty members should produce more new projects for shops. Enough work should alleviate most of the Threats.
• investment in renewal of aging and obsolete equipment will enhance shop capabilities, professional development for staff.
• Possible addition of overhead support from NSERC could support improvement in shop equipment and reduction of shop rate.
• Expansion of capabilities and support for microfabrication and advanced instrumentation such as electron microscopes, NMR spectrometers, optical spectrometers and lasers.

6.1.1.4 Threats

• With the recent hiring freeze and aging faculty, the shops (especially electronics + STS) have been doing less design and construction and more maintenance work. This is less interesting work, and stifles professional development of the staff.
• As integrated circuits become ever smaller and faster, the infrastructure and skills required to design and construct circuits becomes ever greater. In the near future this will pose a serious problem to the electronics shop, as the facilities for building modern projects with surface mount technology do not currently exist in the Department.
• further erosion of departmental support would require cuts to the level of service provided.
• retention of hard-to-replace staff.