After closing its doors and moving across campus in April, the Georgia Tech Research Institute Machine Services Department is starting to fire on all cylinders in its new location.

In the Hinman Building since its inception in 1939, the department is up and running at 676 Marietta St., just northwest of North Avenue.

The department operates from 6 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., supporting not only GTRI but also Georgia Tech and other educational and governmental institutions. Roughly half of its business comes from GTRI, as other clients include Emory University, Georgia State University, the University of Georgia, Wake Forest University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In support of Georgia Tech, the shop works on roughly 300 projects annually for faculty and students, helping take ideas from sketches to physical objects. Primarily, the shop works with the Schools of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, as well as the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the College of Sciences.

With more than 90 tools and access to computer-aided design programs, the department can design, fabricate, assemble, repair and modify machine parts or entire mechanical devices. Among the resources used are several EDM (electrical discharge machining) machines, which use an electrified brass wire or electrode to cut metal to a tolerance of .0002 inches, and a water jet cutting machine, which uses high-pressured water to make extremely fine cuts into metal.

A cost center, Machine Services charges both an hourly labor rate and machine rate. In some cases, machines can work overnight without any personnel being in the office, saving clients a bit of money. Smaller jobs can often be completed within a day. More complex jobs may require several days or weeks.

While the loss of space may affect the ability to upgrade and expand for the future, Machine Services Department Manager Dennis Brown says the majority of marks are still in the plus column. “The new space has better lighting, air conditioning and is a lot quieter, which helps one focus on the task at hand,” he said. “And the space has helped us drop our shop rate by 10 percent for Fiscal Year 2011.”

Some of the more groundbreaking projects produced by the shop include stainless steel deep-water flow meters for the School of Earth and Atmospheric Science, four directional stretcher units used for skin samples at Wake Forest University and many of the custom parts used in the head of the Simon robot, overseen by College of Computing Assistant Professor Andrea Thomaz in the Socially Intelligent Machines Lab.