lowtek
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While the courses are solid, you can't learn materials engineering from a book. You have to actually engineer materials in a lab.
I worked along side polymer physicists at Emory U, their lab set ups were pretty basic.
Find some academic articles along the lines of what you want to do, check out the research equipment they used and then go hunting on ebay (yes, really).
They also discuss their methods, but they leave out quite a few details. Details you'll have to fill in by actually replicating their experiments.