Master Builders, this team of skilled craftsmen in the Agricultural Machinery Research Laboratory can build just about anything, from harvesters and solar houses to fiber optic sensors.

Led by Carl King, ’70 (front left), David Lee Rechtin (front right), Brett Childers (back left), Ed Hutchens (back center), and student Brad Stephens (back right) provide the brains and hands that make ideas from Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering researchers come to life.

“We can usually build what they design,” King said. “We have a very skilled group of people—machinists, welders, draftsmen who can create these things on paper and get them to us in a form that we can use. We’re able to turn that drawing into components for a prototype. It can be for the classroom, for the laboratory, for our extension engineers at a field day, or it can be a full-blown field machine for our researchers.” ◆