Posted on Aug. 15: MMRI expands into Ancaster

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/mmri.jpg” caption=”Andy Hrymak”]McMaster's Manufacturing Research Institute (MMRI) is burgeoning beyond the borders of campus.

Just months after celebrating its first birthday, the MMRI, one of the
largest university manufacturing research institutes in Canada, is
expanding into the Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) facility on Sandhill Drive in Ancaster.

“The expansion into the Ancaster facility is because of some growth that has happened and because of some great opportunities,” says Andy Hrymak, director of the MMRI.

Four recent successes partly attribute to the growth. Since the
institute took up three labs in the John Hodgins Engineering building in May 2001, faculty members in the institute have received three New Opportunities Fund distributed by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, with additional funds from the Ontario Innovation Trust and industrial in-kind support.

The awards went to Philip Koshy, assistant professor, Mechanical
Engineering ($844,000), Mukesh Jain, associate professor, MMRI
($989,000) and Michael Thompson, assistant professor, Chemical
Engineering ($341,335). MMRI also was recently awarded a $4.3-million CFI grant in micro manufacturing with Mo Elbestawi, dean of engineering, as principal investigator.

“With these four new projects we needed more space,” says Hrymak.

The space will also open opportunities to work with industrial partners, he says. “The kind of research we're doing at the manufacturing end, especially in the development of products and improvements of processes, required us to have equipment that was similar to what industry had. One of the key requirements was that we needed space and facilities to house this equipment so that we could tackle more complex projects.”

Obtaining the Ancaster location, which has 5,000-square-feet of shop
floor space and about 9,000-square-feet of office space, is a win-win
situation, he says. “McMaster is able to use the Ancaster facility for
activities that support academic and research objectives within the Faculty of Engineering and at the same time it gives us ready access to shop floor and office space so that we can get up and running quickly with these new CFI projects.”

One of the challenges could be getting people back and forth without
disrupting their work, he says. “What we see over time is that staff and students whose work is primarily with the equipment at the Ancaster location will spend the majority of their time there. So we'll need to create a satellite facility to our MMRI labs here on main campus.”

The location will initially be dedicated to the areas of advanced
machining, micro manufacturing and metal forming, Hrymak says. The
official move is expected to start in September.

The need to expand did not come as a surprise, says Hrymak. “We knew
that because of the calibre of the faculty that they would be
successful, so it was just a question of how and where we were going to grow. The timing was perfect in that the Ancaster facility became
available just as the grant announcements were made.”

The next growth phase, expected within five years, will likely take
place in areas that are complementary to existing research areas, he
says. “The companies we work with are always suggesting new ways that
we might want to structure our research and sometimes that will mean
adding a new faculty member or growing in a new area.”

The MMRI runs more than $1-million industry-relevant research projects a year, with faculty, staff and students from mechanical, chemical, electrical, and materials engineering and engineering physics. The 15,000-square-foot facility houses 13 industrial machines and a robot, and is designed to meet the sophisticated research and development needs of leading manufacturers, working with companies such as Siemens Westinghouse, GM Canada, Cobra Machine Tool, Husky Injection Molding Systems, Orlick Industries and Silicon Graphics Canada.

Photo caption: MMRI director Andy Hrymak looks through a single screw extruder in one of the MMRI labs in the John Hodgins Engineering Building. Photo credit: Chantall Van Raay