CAPE Laboratory

Equipment & Systems

The CAPE Laboratory is equipped with an outstanding array of polymer and composite processing and prototyping equipment, ranging from bench-scale units to industrial scale capabilities. The dedicated 14,000 sq ft facility includes equipment for:
Polymer Processing

Polymer Processing

 
Composite Part Fabrication

Composite Processing and Part Fabrication

 
Composite Material Development

Bioprocessing of Biopolymers and Related Bioproducts

 
Wet Chemistry

Materials Synthesis: Wet Chemistry

 
Battery testing

Battery Assembly and Testing

 
materials and testing

Materials Characterization and Testing

 
machining center

Machining Center and Equipment Fabrication

 

Equipment Schedule and Sign Up

CAPE has a wide variety of equipment for developing, processing and evaluating materials and components.  To efficiently share this equipment, CAPE provides an on-line scheduling system.

CAPE Schedule

To use the CAPE on-line scheduler, you will first need to request an account from the CAPE Staff.  After your account has been created, you may log in and reserve equipment using an interface similar to most electronic calendar applications.

Your reservation will be cancelled if you are more than 10 minutes late and have not notified the CAPE Staff prior to your reservation start time.  Continued tardiness or no shows may result in fines or a loss of privileges.

Contact CAPE Staff to request an account

Other Equipment On Campus

The lab also has ready access to a range of other advanced
analytical instruments across the South Dakota Mines campus, including:

  • Atomic absorption spectroscopy
  • BET surface analyzer C, S, H, N and O elemental analyzer
  • Chromatography: Gas and Liquid, Gel and Ion
  • Field emission variable pressure hi-resolution ESEM
  • Inductively coupled argon plasma mass spectrometry
  • Interfacial force microscopy
  • Hysitron nano-indenter and MTS nano-indenter
  • Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy
  • Laser Raman spectroscopy
  • Mid- and Near- infrared spectroscopy
  • NMR spectroscopy
  • SEM with energy-dispersive X-ray analyzer
  • Scanning/Transmission electron microscopy
  • Scanning probe microscopy (AFM, IFM and STM)
  • Time correlated single photon counting fluorescence spectroscopy
  • UV-Vis spectroscopy
  • Vibrational sum-frequency generation spectroscopy
  • X-Ray diffraction