<story><title>Major shake-up coming for Fermilab, the troubled U.S. particle physics center</title><url>https://www.science.org/content/article/major-shake-coming-fermilab-troubled-u-s-particle-physics-center</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>yummypaint</author><text>My Fermilab story: when I was designing my dissertation experiment it became clear that i would need ~$100k in silicon strip charged particle detectors, and that no company would ever microbond the thousands of connections for me due to the low volume. Fermilab gave me detectors that had been QC rejects from the outer barrel of the CMS detector at CERN for free, and bonded them to my boards for essentially materials cost. For my purposes they worked perfectly. The microbonding machines and the wonderful people associated with them are still to the best of my knowledge the only viable place in the US to have 9x9 cm silicon autobonded in small volume.</text></comment>
<story><title>Major shake-up coming for Fermilab, the troubled U.S. particle physics center</title><url>https://www.science.org/content/article/major-shake-coming-fermilab-troubled-u-s-particle-physics-center</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>h2odragon</author><text>One of my great joys as a teenager exploring electronics was the opportunity to clean out an old storage closet at some Fermilab facility with a friend. This was in the late 80s, we got several 1950s oscilloscopes and much other gear of similar era.&lt;p&gt;The room had been overlooked in the usual surplus process for years. My friend was related to someone working for the janitorial services company, and they&amp;#x27;d been told to clean that room out and throw the stuff away. So what we got to do was help with that, and put anything we liked in my car instead of the dumpster.&lt;p&gt;We were stripping stuff there in the parking lot to save space. Crammed that car &lt;i&gt;full&lt;/i&gt; of junk. It was a truly wonderful day.</text></comment>