Manufacturing Industry Open House at McMaster University

McMaster University’s numerous manufacturing research facilities opened their doors to industry on March 26 to showcase their capabilities for manufacturers interested in partnering with them on manufacturing projects.

“We’ve been involved in fundamental work focused on processes in manufacturing and we have an opportunity to share this information with industry, noted Stephen Veldhuis, director of the McMaster Manufacturing Research Institute (MMR), who spoke with Shop Metalworking Technology at last year’s event.

This year, the event was larger, offering visitors the opportunity to see the W Booth School of Engineering facility, the McMaster Automotive Resource Centre (MARC), McMaster Centre for Software Certification (McSCert), and CanmetMATERIALS, the principal federal R&D laboratory for metals research. Visitors also had the opportunity to see live demos of machining operations, such as high speed machining of mould and die steel, micro machining, closed loop machining and tool wear testing.

Manufacturers and industry suppliers alike have partnered with McMaster’s manufacturing research organizations over the years.

“We have a strong relationship with McMaster and have worked on many projects with Dr. Allan Spence and his students,” says John Rattray, Memex Automation, Burlington, ON. It’s a great collaboration in terms of research McMaster students join us in the company and they use our equipment. We’ve seen a lot of manufacturers come through and we do get leads from these types of events.”

On a Nakamura-Tome machine equipped with an Iscar multi-function DR-MF tool (drilling boring, boring, facing and external turning), MMRI research assistant Keyvan Hosseinkhani explained the work he’s involved in: developing a model and a database of tool wear for carbide tools.

“Our model will be able to tell manufacturers when the wear will happen based on the data we collect. It’s only available for carbide tools but if it works the way we expect, we’ll apply it to CVD and steel tools.”

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