New lab at UNLV for undergrads facilitates innovation

There is a machine in an engineering lab at UNLV that will print out a wrench if you ask it to. Plug in some computer wizardry and, poof, you've got a wrench. Not a picture of a wrench, mind you, but an actual wrench. Or a propeller, a plastic doo-dad or pretty much whatever you want, so long as it fits in the machine.

That piece of high-tech equipment is in the lab for undergraduates, newly christened Thursday night in a dedication ceremony for the Mendenhall Innovation and Design Laboratory. University officials say it is one of the few engineering labs like it.

"Very few colleges of engineering in the country have a spot like this, for students," said Nicholas Fiore, the director of the Mendenhall Innovation Program, which aims to provide engineering students with enough business savvy to make it in the real world.

Students love it.

"There's no way we could get to this level of quality without the advice of the shop staff and the resources of the engineering shop," said student James Warner, who is part of a team of engineering students working on their senior design project.

The lab was financed by a donation from Robert Mendenhall, the founder of Las Vegas Paving and a longtime supporter of UNLV's engineering programs.

It is housed in the old engineering building on campus, in a spot that used to have old equipment and some graduate student researchers.

The researchers have moved over to a new science building, and much of the old equipment was donated to area high schools, said Eric Sandgren, dean of the College of Engineering.

With Mendenhall's donation, totaling about $1.5 million, the new lab was born.

Undergraduate engineering students aren't like, say, English students. They need to build things.

Engineering students, in their senior year, must come up with an idea for a product that will fix a problem.

That's what engineers do.

They are required to then design the product. Then they must build it.

The students are formed into teams, and these teams compete against each other at the end of the year.

Designs featured in past competitions include a quiet shop vacuum, a safety alarm for child seats in the car, and motorcycle headlights that let the rider see around corners.

Warner's team came up with this: a bicycle pedal that won't let a thief ride away on a stolen bike.

It's a pretty simple idea, really. The pedal can be locked in place so it's like any old bike pedal. But when the rider unlocks it, such as when he's left it outside the 7-Eleven while fetching a Gatorade, the pedal will flop straight down if any pressure is put on it.

That would make it pretty much impossible to ride the bike away.

But coming up with such a cool idea is a whole lot easier than turning it into reality.

Team member Natallia Shabanava, a native of Russia, said the team explored several design options before settling on one that actually works. They designed the pedal in a computer program.

Then they had to build it. This was before the new lab.

So, they trekked over to Warner's garage. They ended up with a pretty rough prototype.

"I have a few tools," he said. "But nothing like this."

Once the new lab was up and running, the team was able to use a machine the size of a Hyundai called a Computer Numerical Controlled system. It will basically carve out whatever parts you want to create.

This is in addition to the parts printer mentioned above, called a rapid prototyper. For now, that machine only makes things out of a relatively flimsy plastic.

In the future? Who knows.

The lab's got computer-guided drills and saws and all kinds of regular engineering tools, too. It's got computer design stations and storage space. It's pretty much heaven for the undergrads.

Sandgren, the dean, said much of engineering education is theoretical -- book learning. That's fine, he said, but it's not enough. Engineers need experience actually building things, like a writer needs experience writing or an astronomer needs experience with a telescope.

This lab, he said, should fix that.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.