By TRENT WELLS

The Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Technology is building a new electronics assembly and automation laboratory. The new lab will cost more than $100,000 to build and will take six to eight more months to complete. Construction began in August.

Robert Todd, acting chair of the department, said the new lab will better prepare students for careers in the industry.

"We want our students to understand the capabilities and integration of these machines," he said. "We are modernizing our labs to do that."

The new automation lab is an effort to keep up with the rapidly changing and progressing industry of manufacturing and electronics.

"We see the lab as a two-way improvement," said Barry Lunt, professor of manufacturing engineering and chairman of the committee for the new lab. "One is that assembly is an area of manufacturing where we are not very strong. Second, electronics assembly is such a growing area that this lab will enable students to have a hands-on experience that will prepare them for the industry."

"The lab will represent state-of-the-art equipment and state-of-the-art solutions for assembly," Lunt said.

The lab being is also unique.

Ed Red, professor of manufacturing engineering and specialist in robotics and automation, said that this is the first time systems training will be brought into the department's curriculum and research activities.

"In this lab, we will literally build products that are electronics based," he said.

Red said the products could be anywhere from small cellular phones to radios to pagers to small hand-held products.

"I think the real function of the lab is to bring a lot of manufacturing subsystems and components together to determine what the real-life problems are when you start trying to make more than one thing work at a time," he said.

The lab will be a type of training ground for the students, which will provide them with a unique opportunity that simulates what goes on in the industry, Red said.

Russ Livesay, a graduate student in manufacturing engineering, said BYU has been in need of this type of lab for a long time.

"This lab will be a tremendous research tool," he said. "It will be outstanding. The learning that I have gained by working on the development of this lab alone is outstanding."

Livesay has been working on the development of the lab since January.

Plans for the new lab have been developing since September 1996 when approval for the lab's development were given, Todd said.

Copyright Brigham Young University 5 Sep 1997