College-industry collaborate on mine safety devices.

Cambrian Innovates, the applied research arm of Sudbury's Cambrian College, received $190,000 to support applied research through a Voucher for Industry Association R&D Challenge grant from Ontario Centres for Excellence (OCE) and its partner, the Ultra-Deep Mining Network (UDMN).

The grants will allow students and college faculty to develop commercially-viable new technologies that improve the safety of underground miners.

Cambrian Innovates will work on two projects with two industry partners.

The first project with Rock-Tech, a Sudbury manufacturer of equipment engineered specifically for underground mining, aims to improve rock breaking.

In mining, ore is usually collected and passed through a steel screen. A person operating a rock breaker crushes the ore that is too large to pass through the screen. This process is expensive, time-consuming and poses inherent safety risks.

Rock-Tech and Cambrian Innovates aim to build a new customizable steel screen system that will be able to better handle ore chunks of various sizes.

The second project with Sudbury's Jannatec Technologies aims to develop the wiring system for a wearable piece of technology to be used in a heavy...