Work at Canadore helps a company drill in space

A feather in the cap for Canadore College’s Innovation Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Production.

ICAMP has been working with a Sudbury-area company and North Bay’s Atlas Copco to produce tool ends for the company’s space mining equipment.

Evan Butler-Jones is ICAMP’s applied research lead and says the two firms brought their ideas to ICAMP.

He says the technical process they used is called Additive Manufacturing where they can make full complex parts out of metal or plastic and turn them into prototypes and full use parts.

Butler-Jones says Deltion Innovations Ltd. had complex shapes and they needed someone to help build them.

That’s where the 3D metal printer and computer numerical control equipment at ICAMP came in to play.

the work was recently completed and the product delivered to Deltion.

Butler-Jones says the multi purpose tool has future deep space applications on the Moon, Mars and asteroids too.

Overall he it was a team approach at the college with many shops and labs involved in the project.