Research & Innovation came equipped with some of their scanners that students demonstrated to industry professionals
Niagara College’s Research & Innovation division (R&I) showcased its state-of-the-art scanning technology at the 2018 Niagara Industrial Association (NIA) Tradeshow on February 23.
The event, held at the Fallsview Casino Resort, attracted more than 60 vendors across Niagara’s industry sector. R&I impressed guests with its FARO Edge ScanArm from the Walker Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Centre and a spatial scanner to promote how local industry can improve efficiency and leverage the College’s technology to offer industry solutions.
One of the ways R&I helps industry is through research projects, often times product development where the College takes an idea and creates a working prototype that the client can manufacture and mass produce.
“Our scanner can do reverse engineering projects or with our spatial scanner we can capture the as-built data of a construction site,” said David Vuyk, research laboratory technologist at Research & Innovation. “Our goal is to help local industry innovate, give them access to new technologies and help them de-risk that technology so they can get a taste for how it works and benefits them before they make the initial investment.”
Vuyk was on-hand to demonstrate to industry professionals the various core competencies that NC’s technology can provide. “Another technology vertical is additive manufacturing (3D printing) which is really helpful for creating jigs and fixtures for measuring, prototype development and, in some cases, tooling for different manufacturers,” he added. “We also do design and simulation, whether that’s FEA (finite element analysis) of CFD (computational fluid dynamics) analysis – analyzing fluids and gases in different applications.”
