MEng projects

Each year, the Electrochemical Green Engineering Group supervises several M. Eng projects. Students can select available projects or define in collaboration with our team a project. Interested candidates should contact Prof. Wuthrich or any of our team members. All currently enrolled M. Eng students, in any of Concordia's program (engineering or science), can apply.

All projects are closely related to the research conducted by our team and usually involves the design and construction of research facilities that will be later used in our work. All projects are supervised by a research assistant from our team.

Project proposals

To: MEng (MIE) students for course project winter semester 2016

Eligibility: 1 student, Mechanical Engineering, design & simulation skills, literature survey

Interested students can contact and send their CV to L. Hof (l_hof@encs.concordia.ca) and Dr. R. Wuthrich (rolf.wuthrich@concordia.ca) for the selection procedure.

Duration: 1 semester

Description:

Spark Assisted Chemical Engraving (SACE) is a hybrid glass micro-machining technology developed in our team and commercialized by the Swiss company Posalux SA. This technology allows in particular the machining of deep and high aspect ratio structures in glass manufacturing crack- and burr-free surfaces.
The aim of this project is to design and manufacture a demonstrator using SACE technology. The demonstrator is a microfluidic pump based on a Geneva-Mechanism.
The student will design the system and simulate its performances using Comsol and manufacture it in our laboratory.

Examination:

At the end of the semester, the project results will be presented in a report and a demonstrator is machined.

To: MEng (MIE) students for course project winter semester 2016

Eligibility: 1 student, Mechanical Engineering, design & simulation skills, literature survey

Interested students can contact and send their CV to L. Hof (l_hof@encs.concordia.ca) and Dr. R. Wuthrich (rolf.wuthrich@concordia.ca) for the selection procedure.

Duration: 1 semester

Description:

With the forth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) manufacturing industry faces new challenges. The aim is to develop smart factories which will be able to produce ultra-customized (batch size 1) in economical ways. One of the key component is the Internet of Things (IoT) through which devices communicate along the whole production chain. This requires more and more smartness to be incorporated in even smaller sub-systems.
Our research group develops open source code for the IoT and applies it on real examples. In the frame of this project we want to develop a machining head controller for a glass micro-machining facility. Besides having the intelligence of the control algorithm (a variation of a PID controller), the head has to be able to communicate with the IoT in order to send useful data to the complete network in order to optimize production.
The implementation will be done in a microcontroller. Part of the project is to incorporate the communication protocol, based on a Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) bus. The student will have the possibility to learn about this protocol and participate in the development of the open source library for IoT currently under development in our team.

Examination:

At the end of the semester, the project results will be presented in a report and a control algorithm is implemented in the microcontroller.

Ongoing projects

To: MEng (MIE) students for course project winter semester 2016

Eligibility: 2 students, Mechanical Engineering, design skills, CATIA

Interested students can contact Dr. R. Wuthrich (rolf.wuthrich@concordia.ca) for the selection procedure.

Duration: 1 semester

Description:

Design and manufacturing of a multifunctional platform to enable in situ micro-tool fabrication for micromachining glass by Spark Assisted Chemical Engraving (SACE)
Integration of three technologies on one platform mounted on high precision x-y stages
- Tool grinding for micro-tool fabrication (with integrated microscope for process control)
- Electro-polishing setup to obtain low-roughness micro-tools
- Electrochemical cell for SACE micromachining of glass

Examination:

At the end of the semester, the design (including drawings) will be presented in a report and the platform will be (at least partially) manufactured.

Students:

Varinder Pal Singh (vpal86@yahoo.com)
Chaitlin Chandran Dillai (chaithinc@gmail.com)

To: MEng (MIE) students for course project winter semester 2016

Eligibility: 2 students, Mechanical Engineering, experimental research skills, literature survey

Interested students can contact Dr. R. Wuthrich (rolf.wuthrich@concordia.ca) for the selection procedure.

Duration: 1 semester

Description:

Specific applications demand for thin layers of metal uniformly deposited on non-conductive parts like 3D printed plastic parts to improve their mechanical properties or give otherwise added value to the part (eg. esthetical).
Electroplating is a promising candidate to fulfill this task, however plating non-conductive materials asks for a special approach and uniform layers are challenging to obtain.
The aim of this project is to develop a procedure for electroplating plastic (3D printed) parts and show the proof-of-principle through experiments on parts with different geometries.

Examination:

At the end of the semester, the project (experimental) results will be presented in a report and real plastic parts are electroplated.

Students: