About
The purpose of the Machine and Electronic Shop is to support all College of Arts and Sciences departments by providing necessary electronics and machine shop expertise. The group is a technical resource that can help advise, design, construct and/or repair apparatus that support everything from faculty research to freshman student labs.
Staff
Patrick Richardson
richardsonpj@appstate.edu
Tasks
- Often make special modifications to desks/tables, telescopes, nitrogen weather instruments and other scientific equipment
- Keep lab equipment up and running throughout the College
- Made a spectrograph for South Africa and Virginia
- Helped design the weather station, Pluvio snow monitor, that is in Quelccaya, Peru
- Assisted Campbell scientific with the design of a tripod on the Mount Everest weather station
- Redesign and built a new humidity control system for AppalAir Nephelometer
- Repair and update design for Multi-Axis Snow Camera
- Assist App State Team Sunergy and student team members with solar car projects Apperion and Rose
Work Case Example
McKinney Geology Teaching Museum and Rankin West Displays – Upgraded Lighting
Fluorescent lighting in the museum and several display areas have been upgraded to state-of-the-art LEDs, highlighting the minerals, reptiles and geography with dramatically improved color accuracy and light intensity. CAS was able to do this in concert with financial support from the App State REI and Facilities Operations.
Along with the quality improvements, environmental impacts include
- 71% reduction in total energy use, equal to twice the output of the Peacock Traffic Circle "Mountain-M" PV array at 4% of the cost
- 4.79 MTeCO2 reduction per year which includes reducing our yearly fossil fuel consumption by 3,950 pound(s) of Coal and 11,172 cubic ft of Natural Gas
- Elimination of short lifetime mercury-containing fluorescent light bulbs with 10 year lifetime LEDs.