Having just completed my course in mechanical engineering at BMSCE I am well positioned to answer your question.
Lets judge the department in four parts:
Infrastructure, non teaching staff, teaching staff and placements.
The department in the last few years has acquired some new machines to perhaps decrease the average age of the total technical inventory. My opinion is that the presence or absence of any of these machines don’t really matter in the larger scheme of things. You go to lab, the attender sets up everything, you copy down values. In the end most of us end up carbon copying a senior’s record. The presence of these machines might help you in your projects but the red tape you need to cut through to actually use them will make using machines off campus a better option.
The non-teaching staff would be the attenders and the maintenance staff. Have a thought about the maintenance staff too. They keep the department clean and take out whatever junk we leave carelessly at our desks. They are probably the most efficient group of people in the college. The technical attenders are generally very friendly and approachable. Have a good rapport with them not because they help you immensely in passing lab exams but because they too are fellow human beings. The administrative attenders are also very approachable. But if you want a signature from the HOD I highly recommend meeting him personally instead of waiting in the department office.