Edgerton Student Shop
  • Graduate student Mitchell Hsing fabricates aluminum components for the Schmidt Research Group.
    Graduate student Mitchell Hsing fabricates aluminum components.
  • Graduate student Arolyn Conwill fabricating a copper part for use in a research experiment
    Graduate student Arolyn Conwill fabricating a copper part for use in a research experiment
  • Students at the Edgerton Student Shop learn the basics of metal working
    Learning the basics of metal working
    Christopher Harting

Funded by MIT, with capital-equipment acquisitions covered by an endowment gift from the Lemelson Foundation, the Edgerton Student Shop provides MIT students with the tools and training to fabricate almost anything, for their own use or to support research and coursework.

The shop offers intensive training classes of 12 hours per student. With nothing but raw materials, students learn to machine the parts for a flashlight from scratch. While it is primarily a metalworking shop, there are also 3-D printers on site.

Students have fabricated parts for the VERTIGO experiment, now installed in the International Space Station, and parts for a dark-matter detector installed 2,000 feet underground in New Mexico. One graduate student recently fabricated his own set of wedding rings.