Equipment rates

The equipment rate for internal users is $7,000 per week.

The rate includes access to the entire lab, help from IPML staff in planning and supporting the experiments, as well as all consumables needed for the experiments. Users are responsible for bringing and taking away all chemicals and materials.

The rate is equivalent to less than $42 per hour for all processing and four different characterization methods: extrusion testing, rheology, frontal polymerization and DSC.

IPML access

The entire IPML lab will be booked by users one week at a time. New users will start at noon Tuesday and their time will end at 10 a.m. the following Tuesday.

Gaining access to the lab is a multi-step process:

1. Submit a 2-3 page proposal to IPML staff. The proposal should describe materials that will be made, processing requirements and characterization requirements. The proposal should specifically describe the potential safety concerns.

2. Proposals are reviewed by IPML staff for safety and feasibility (not scientific merit).

3. Once a proposal has been successfully reviewed, a meeting will be scheduled between the potential users and IPML staff to further discuss the proposed plan.

   1. The meeting will make sure that the users are fully aware of the capabilities and any potential limitations.

   2. IPML staff will work with the users to identify how many experiments can be run and how much of each chemical that the users will need to buy and bring to the facility.

   3. IPML staff will help identify what experiments will need to be performed before the users testing week, including select thermogravimetric analysis and rheology experiments.

4. Once the materials have been acquired, a week will be booked for the experiments.

5. i-card access will be provided to the lab from Tuesday through Tuesday of the experiment week.

6. Experiments will begin at noon Tuesday and will continue until 10 a.m. the following Tuesday. 10 a.m. to noon is reserved for cleaning the materials out and resetting the modules for the next users.