Engineering Labs

‌The Automation and Robotics lab provides students and faculty with state-of-the-art tools for studying topics in automation, control, and robotics. 

This lab supports the interdisciplinary Controls Stem courses:

• System Modeling and Analysis
• Automatic Control
• Applied Control

In particular, the lab is home to the following hardware:

• Quanser rotary servo systems
• Clearpath Chameleon mobile robots
• Educational Control Products Rectilinear Plant
• Motoman industrial manipulator
• Yamaha industrial manipulators

Furthermore, the lab is outfitted with laptop computers that are loaded with modern control system modeling and programming tools such as:

• Mathworks Matlab/Simulink
• Quanser Quarc
• NI LabView

In the Electronic Instrumentation Lab at York College students acquire hands-on experience with basic electronic instrumentation, such as power supplies, waveform generators, digital multimeters and oscilloscopes. Students also work with software packages for circuit simulation and data acquisition. Students use these resources along with a wide-range of sensors and motors to build a variety of electronic devices and systems, such as AC and DC motor controllers, data collection devices, amplifiers, and simple security devices, and mobile robots.

The Electronic Instrumentation lab supports the following courses:

• Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering
• Design & Analysis of Analog Circuits

There are 12 lab stations (2 students per) and each station consists of the following equipment:

• Desktop computer
• 1x Wavetek Meterman function generator
• 1x Fluke 8808A digital multi-meter
• 1x Fluke 117 digital multi-meter
• 2x Agilent E3648A DC power supply
• 1x Agilent DSO3102A 100MHz oscilloscope
• 1x Jameco breadboard
• The lab has an ample supply of tools and components for students to build test circuits.

Software licenses have been obtained for students to use for coursework:

• MATLAB and Simulink. Additional toolboxes include Control System, Data Acquisition, Signal Processing, Fixed Point, Signal Processing, Neural Network, Statistics, Symbolic Math.
• OrCAD circuit simulation software

A fully ESD-safe lab space, intended for the development and use of complex digital systems. These systems often include microcontrollers, field-programmable logic devices, real-time operating systems, and various user interfaces. 

This lab supports a number of electrical and computer engineering courses, including:

• Design & Analysis of Digital Circuits
• Fundamentals of Computer Engineering
• Microprocessor System Design
• Embedded Systems Design
• Capstone Design I and II

There are 10 lab stations (2 students per station) and each lab station includes at least the following equipment:

• Two desktop computers (one for each student)
• Fluke 8846A digital bench multimeter
• Fluke 117 handheld multimeter
• Agilent E3648A 50W bench dual power supply
• TechTools DV3400 400Mhz 36 Channel PC hosted logic analyzer
• Atmel AT90USB1286 microcontroller development boards
• NXP LPC1768 ARM Cortex M-3 microcontroller development boards
• Xilinx Spartan 3E FPGA development boards

In addition, the lab features a number of other more specialized devices for use in project work, capstone design projects, or student independent studies:

• TotalPhase USB 480 Protocol Analyzer
• Agilent MSO7034A 350Mhz Mixed-Signal Oscilloscope
• Xilinx Virtex-2 FPGA development boards
• Dedicated computer workstation for long term development, compute jobs, and other needs
• Dedicated equipment for printed circuit board soldering and assembly

While working in the embedded systems lab, students have access to not only the standard software used in other electrical and computer engineering labs, but also a number of other more specialized software tools, including:

• The Xilinx Embedded Development Kit
• The Microsoft Visual Studio Professional Integrated Development Environment
• A broad range of GNU/open source development tools, including Eclipse, GCC, and other tools
• Micrium uC-OS III
• FreeRTOS
• IAR Systems Embedded Workbench
• Segger embOS and J-Link JTAG/SWD Interface

This laboratory is intended to support instruction in the areas of communication and signal processing applications. These applications include audio signal processing, image processing, wired/wireless communications, sensors and sensor networks, radar/sonar processing, and target tracking.

The lab supports the following courses for lab work and demonstrations:

• Waves & Optics
• Introduction to Signal Processing
• Random Signals
• Communication Networks
• Communication Systems
• Independent Study courses arranged with the instructor

The lab is sized to accommodate a maximum of 20 students working in pairs at 10 student workstations. Lab stations contain instrumentation and equipment to support lab instruction:

• Agilent DSO6032A, 300 MHz 2-channel oscilloscopes
• Agilent 33220A 20 MHz Function/Arbitrary Waveform Generator
• Texas Instruments TMS320C6713 Digital Signal Processing circuit board
• Agilent E3648A Dual Output DC Power Supply
• Fluke Model 117 digital multimeter
• Additional tools and components for breadboarding and building test circuits

Additionally each workstation has a desktop computer containing specialized software to support students in their coursework:

• MATLAB and Simulink. Additional toolboxes include Control System, Data Acquisition, Signal Processing, Fixed Point, Neural Network, Statistics, and Symbolic Math.
• B2Spice circuit simulation software
• Microsoft Office, Visio, Project, Visual Studio

Power Systems and Energy Conversion (PSEC) Lab deals with power generation, transmission, control, and energy conversions. This laboratory teaches the fundamentals of power systems, power electronics, energy efficiency, motor control, and renewable energy integration.

The PSEC lab supports the following courses:

• Power Systems
• Power Electronics

Is equipped with state-of-art lab equipment such as:

• dSPACE
• motor control board
• power electronic converters
• photovoltaic systems

And uses the following programs to model and simulate the power systems, power electronics, and renewable energy systems:

• MATLAB/SIMULINK
• PowerWorld
• PSCAD
• SPICE

In this lab, students discover first-hand how combustion engines and air conditioners work. They also study topics such as lift and drag on airplane wings, piping and pumping systems, fluid jets, and flow visualization. Fluid interactions with solids and the resulting energy exchange are very important aspects of mechanical engineering, and students can see this dynamic exchange in action.

Thermal Sciences Lab Equipment

• Steam Turbine Power System (pictured)
• Wind Tunnel
• Water Tunnel
• Laser Doppler Velocimeter
• Transparent Combustion Engine
• Bomb Calorimeter
• Instrumented Air Conditioner
• Viscosity Drop Tower and Canon-Fenske Viscometer
• Piping System
• Pumps in Parallel and Series
• Pressure and Temperature Sensors
• Jet Engine
• Schlieren Laser Flow Visualization Test Stand
• Heat Exchanger Test Stand

Pictured above: A complete miniature vapor power system illustrating the concepts of thermodynamic cycles, mass and energy conservation and electrical power generation.

The Materials Science Lab is where students break things educationally. By observing and measuring the manner in which materials fail, students develop an understanding of how materials behave and of how failures can be avoided. Also, students learn how different forms of processing can alter material behavior.

Mechanical engineering students have two courses in the Materials Science & Engineering Lab:

Materials and Solids Lab in their sophomore year which focuses on the mechanical behavior of materials. Students see ...

• concepts of stress and strain in experiments that reinforce the concurrent lecture topics, both in torsion and in pure tension on two different machines;
• work with a plastic I-beam in this course, as well as a pressure vessel;
• and learn about measurement of strain and of force, and the differences between ductile and brittle failure. 

Materials Science Lab taken in their junior year where the focus is more on the properties of materials and how changing these properties changes the observed behavior. Students will .... 

• work with specimens that have been annealed in the furnaces in the lab to demonstrate the effects of permanent deformation on materials;
• test impact energy of different materials, identifying the temperature at which a common steel becomes brittle;
• perform basic heat treatments on specimens, seeing the differences caused by heat treatment in impact energy and in surface hardness;
• and lastly, students weld steel specimens and observe the resulting changes in the grain structure as well as the failure in simple tension as well as repeated fatigue loading.

Materials Science Lab equipment includes:

• Tinius-Olsen Super-L tensile tester
• Tinius-Olsen S-1000-2B extensometer
• Tinius-Olsen M1000 tensile tester
• Tinius-Olsen 50ST tensile tester
• Tinius-Olsen 10,000 in. lb bench-top torsion tester
• Thermolyne 48000 furnace
• Huppert Deluxe furnace
• Wilson Rockwell 574 hardness tester
• Wilson 5YR RB Rockwell hardness tester
• Wilson 4 JS superficial Rockwell hardness tester
• Leco M-400A hardness tester
• Nikon 6501 shadow comparator
• Unimet Unitron 7307 optical microscope
• Z-Corporation Z402 3D printer 
• Dimension UPring 3D printer
• Instron fatigue tester
• Satec SF-10 fatigue tester 
• Tinius-Olsen impact tester (Charpy/Izod) 
• Vishay Micro-measurements P-3500 strain indicator 
• Vishay Micro-measurements P3 strain indicator 
• Vishay Micro-measurements SB-10 switch and balance unit 
• Soldering irons 
• Isomet low-speed saw
• Leco Spectrum 1000 polishing system 
• Labonco Protector laboratory fume hood