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Photos: UCSC's hidden workshop

Photos by Carolyn Lagattuta and the UCSC Machine Shop.

November 08, 2013

Dave Thayer, left, and Joe Cox of the Physical and Biological Sciences Machine Shop say they’re a team.
Sparks fly at the welding bay in the P.B. Sci. Machine Shop, located in the basement of the Baskin Engineering Building. Joe Cox welds a leg for an Arctic deployment Gantry.
‘We’re combination engineers, machinists, trouble-shooters and hobbyists,’ Joe Cox says. 
Mirror array for solar demonstration project (boiling water using solar concentration).
Spark generator mechanism for creating microscopic pin holes in Teflon film for use in DNA sequencing.
This Thayer-and-Cox-built stainless-steel probe was designed to travel a half-mile through a 12-inch hole in Antarctic ice in order to further research being done by UCSC glaciologist Slawek Tulaczyk.
Removable weights designed by Thayer and Cox allowed researchers to modify the heaviness of the Antarctic probe.
Two-ton winch project for deployment of the thermal probe.
There hasn’t been a shop accident in 18 years.
Portable clean room/boron-free testing chamber.
Thayer and Cox turn napkin sketches into hand-drawn designs. 
They never know what project will come next. Pictured: Foldable Gantry for Arctic research project.
'The word’s out we can pretty much make anything,’ Thayer says.
Thayer turning aluminum parts on the lathe.
Precision is the name of the game.
Metal from a lathe curls like smoke.
Cox knew he was a ‘tinkerer’ when he took apart his grandfather’s watch at age 8.
Years of hands-on experience are part of every job. Thayer puts the final finish on an aluminum part.
Attention to detail extends even to the shop.
Custom heavy-duty steel tables for mounting Jacob Rosen's medical robotic arms.
Pride is part of every job for Thayer and Cox. Pictured: A brass plaque that is mounted on finished projects.