This department has been created to offer routine care, maintenance and repair of all the instruments in the hospitals. The department knick named as “240” exists in Madurai, Tirunelveli, Coimbatore, Pondicherry and Theni. Madurai takes the extra task of running periodic short term (six-week) courses in instruments maintenance for technicians of other eye hospitals. Technicians from different states and union territories in India and 22 developing countries (Belize, Jamaica, Ghana, The Gambia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, Zanzibar, Pakistan, Nepal. Bangladesh, Myanmar, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippines and Papua New Guinea) have undergone the training. Free instruments Maintenance camps are integral part of these courses. The trainees are taken to different hospitals to maintain the instruments in those hospitals. Besides this the department also offers at a very nominal cost servicing of instruments of other ophthalmologists and eye hospitals.The staff members of the department have conducted similar courses and camps in other countries - Nigeria, Vietnam, and Kenya.

The department also offers a one week course in instruments maintenance for Ophthalmologists and Hospital Administrators. Usually Ophthalmologists and Hospital Administrators who come to Aravind-Madurai for other courses are willing to stay an extra week and undergo this course. A similar course for senior paramedics was conducted in Bangladesh.

Besides regular maintenance, the department is involved in fabrication of some spare parts like bulbs for slit lamps to use in Aravind clinics, for investigation, research and for supply to the patients. Some of the items the department has fabricated included, special hook switch to use it with indirect ophthalmoscopes, Model eye used for patient counselling, Four dot test unit and Hex Chart used in the paediatric ophthalmology clinic, the CCTV camera for the low vision patients, a simple gadget for the study of Posterior Capsule Opacification (PCO) and an inexpensive attachment of a camera to slit lamp for taking fundus pictures for use in telemedicine. Recently, the department has produced a video in DVD format as well as in VHS format, showing the care and Maintenance of different instruments used in Ophthalmology.