About

General Information about the Lab

The Mechanical Testing Instructional Laboratory (MTIL) is an undergraduate laboratory administered by the Grainger College of Engineering. The lab is located in Talbot Laboratory, Room 201 and the Interim Laboratory Coordinator is Lucas Osborne.

Course instructors and TA staffs change. The permanent lab staff provides a consistent environment and expertise for the equipment, the experiments, and the teaching procedures.

The overall purpose of this facility is to provide equipment, materials and supervision that cannot be cost justified by individual departments. A primary emphasis is to provide hands-on experience for the individual student. It is important that each student gets as much time as possible working with the equipment and seeing actual results. The highest priority for the use of this lab is always for scheduled undergraduate laboratory instructional courses.

History of UIUC College-wide Instructional Laboratories

In the article College-wide Instructional Laboratories, Maureen L. Tan described the concept of these labs in UIUC's Engineering Outlook, Winter 1994-95.

In the early 1970's, the state legislature imposed large budget cuts. University administrators sacrificed the line item for instructional equipment and laboratories. They were confident that this crucial part of the budget would be promptly restored. However, beginning in 1972, no state funds were allocated for these items. As a result, the quality of the instructional labs in the College of Engineering deteriorated.

At the same time, enrollments were expanding and new technologies were developing, particularly the use of computers. In the early 1980's UIUC administrators were able to persuade the legislature that engineering was critical to the prosperity of the state economy. A revitalization program commenced, but was terminated in 1987, Many of the goals had not been met.

During that period, other positive developments occurred. Faculty utilized their proposal writing skills to procure instructional lab equipment. Computer companies realized that donating computer equipment for instructional labs would improve the quality of graduates and might effect a preference for their equipment. The Illinois Society of Professional Engineers established an Illinois Engineering Equipment Grant Program to fund undergraduate labs. Funding was established, but the College needed an approach to maintain modern computing in the undergraduate programs.

The use of computing in the curricula required a substantial investment in hardware and software and the training of the students. It was difficult for individual departments and their faculty to meet these demands. College-wide labs were conceived to relieve the departments of the financial burden and student training. The first Engineering Workstation Laboratory was established in 1991. Equipment operations and upgrades are consistent for all workstation labs and configurations allow departments to run different software.

While the college-wide workstation plan was being developed, the idea of a Computer-Integrated Manufacturing Laboratory was developed. This lab was opened shortly after the workstation labs were established.

The success of the college-wide laboratory concept provided the impetus to explore two more areas. Around 1990, six departments had control systems laboratories and seven had mechanical properties laboratories. Much of the required equipment was expensive, but used for only a short time. The laboratory course of some departments encompassed an entire semester, while others ran only a few experiments. Equipment procurement and maintenance were major problems.

The College of Engineering's Control Systems Laboratory that was developed continues to serve many courses from several departments in the college.

History of the Mechanical Testing Instructional Laboratory

A faculty group began exploring the possibility of a laboratory for mechanical properties testing in September 1992. Mechanical testing was an important part of the curricula of several departments; however, there was general dissatisfaction with the existing facilities. No facility was large enough to permit hands-on experience for the students. The equipment was generally old. More modern equipment procured for sophisticated research programs was not suited for use by inexperienced lab students.

All mechanical testing laboratories could not be accommodated by one facility; however, the committee concluded that a laboratory equipped to explore fundamental mechanical properties would be a valuable asset for teaching introductory materials courses. The lab would consolidate acquisition of modern equipment. Equipment maintenance, specimen supply, and training of teaching assistants would no longer be departmental concerns.

The laboratory was established in Talbot Laboratory in 1994. A. F. (Tony) Graziano, associate dean for administrative affairs for the College of Engineering, oversaw development. Equipment was selected to serve a core of experiments common to several departments. Dr. Peter Kurath, Director of the Advanced Material Testing and Evaluation Laboratory (AMTEL), directed the procurement of equipment and arrangement of the facility. He also wrote up basic lab experiments for use by departments that did not have a formal lab manual.

John Williams joined the university as MTIL lab manager in September, 1994. The first students to use the lab in the 1994 fall semester came from GE225. Some labs for TAM224, AAE261, and NucE352 were performed in the new facility. In spring of 1995, the lab was used by eleven courses from seven departments.

John Williams retired from the university and David Farrow joined the university as MTIL lab manager in August, 2010, retiring in December 2024.

MTIL has served students for over twenty years and continues to serve students of many courses from several departments in the Grainger College of Engineering.