Machine Elements Laboratory

Welcome to the website of the Machine Elements Laboratory. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Kathrin Ottink is the academic director for the field of machine elements at the University of Applied Sciences Emden-Leer, and Dr.-Ing. Thomas Ebel is responsible for day-to-day operations. Their contact information is provided below.

Machine Components – High-Tech Products in Nearly Every Technical System

Machine components are often not the most expensive parts in a system—but their failure can result in enormous costs, downtime, and other problems.

Just think of a seal in a marine gearbox that fails, causing the entire gearbox to flood with seawater. Such a seal itself costs only a few euros, whereas the resulting costs for repairing the entire gearbox can amount to several thousand euros. The reason for the failure may have been the use of a seal made of an unsuitable material or the failure to replace the seal regularly as part of maintenance.

Examples like this show that it is very important to specifically select and design the right machine components—such as bearings, seals, gears, or screws—for each particular application. Furthermore, especially for use in safety-critical applications, machine components must be specifically tested and further developed before they are put into service. Furthermore, damage incidents from a wide variety of industrial sectors can be investigated in detail based on failed machine components. This often makes it possible to determine the cause of a damage incident retrospectively.

The Laboratory for Machine Components at the University of Applied Sciences Emden-Leer covers all of these areas of focus.

Typical machine components include:

Rolling and Sliding Bearings
Static and dynamic seals
Screws and other fasteners
Gears
Drive shafts
Couplings

Students can already help set up the lab. As part of technical projects and thesis work, test bench setups and laboratory equipment for testing machine components are currently being developed. If you enjoy working in the areas of design, control systems for test equipment, or assembly and setup, please feel free to contact Prof. Ottink or Dr. Ebel to discuss potential projects and tasks.