Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

A common source of inefficiency and cause of cost overruns in manufacturing is imprecision and wear in industrial dies and surfaces. This leads to unplanned maintenance operations in manufacturing facilities which can cost millions of dollars annually. Manufacturers use die extrusions, typically large cylindrical rolls, to flatten polymers into flat sheets. However through repetitive use, deformations as well as wear tear occur on the die's surface. Manufacturers often use screws to re-adjust the surface and compensate for these deformations. These solutions have not been able to reduce unplanned maintenance significantly. A company like Maieutic Enterprises has a potential solution to this problem. They call their patent pending technology 'programmable surface'. Since this is a complex problem, it has to be tackled breaking it down into smaller chunks, technically called subsystems. One crucial subsystem involves engineering a liquid which can exert and bear large forces. This field of applied science is hydraulics. The proposal is that Centennial's researchers will be able to develop the hydraulic subsystem for a 'programmable surface' using facilities at the college.