CAAT Tracks

November/December 2022

CAAT Activities

The Design and Manufacturing Alliance (DMA), began 25 years ago as Project Draft under the joint leadership of Jim Varty, then serving as Dean of Corporate Services at Macomb Community College, and Ron DeBrabent of General Motors. Its purpose was to strengthen design education across Southeastern Michigan and increase the number of co-op opportunities for students at GM and its design suppliers. The DMA is now transitioning its activities to the Center for Advanced Automotive Technology (CAAT) at Macomb. The move was announced by Keith Deyer who led the organization for the past 12 years. 

Following the DMA’s 2-year Covid pandemic break, Keith and Jim evaluated various options to re-engage and ultimately decided it was time for the next DMA evolution as it would allow them both to retire – again. After much deliberation, they decided that since the DMA and the CAAT already worked in partnership and had compatible and synergistic missions, it made sense to merge the DMA with the CAAT. 

In more recent years, the DMA was responsible for arranging design and manufacturing experiential opportunities (i.e., tours, professional development conferences, etc.) for thousands of educators and students. Over its 25-year history, the DMA worked with approximately 100 organizations to bring high quality experiential opportunities to learners of all ages. 

The DMA has proudly offered tours to more than 2,500 students at approximately 25 unique organizations involved in design, fabrication, production, and assembly. These tours included the GM Orion Assembly Plant, Nissan’s North American Technical Center, FANUC America Corporation, and the General Dynamics, Land Systems Maneuver Collaboration Center, just to name a few.  Public and private museums also opened their doors for DMA participants. These included Stahl’s Automotive Museum, the GM Heritage Center and the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant, birthplace of the Ford Model T. 

Over the years, the DMA sponsored two professional development conferences annually for educators and industry professionals. In recent years, the DMA offered one conference in the spring in conjunction with the CAAT at MCC and the other in the fall at another college located in Macomb, Oakland or Genessee county. These conferences were attended by more than 5,000 people, and the learning educators took back to their classrooms indirectly impacted thousands of their students.

The DMA industry tours and professional development conferences will continue under CAAT’s leadership.  Sherri Doherty, Assistant Director at the CAAT, has been designated the new contact for all DMA related activities. She can be reached at dohertys@macomb.edu or 586-447-8618. Sherri will work closely with Jim and Keith through the transition and looks forward to continuing the DMA tradition of encouraging and fostering communication, partnerships and networking among design and manufacturing industry companies, their professional associations, government, and educators in Southeast Michigan. The entire CAAT team wishes to thank Keith and Jim for their tireless, selfless dedication and enthusiasm to support students and educators for the past 25 years! We are honored to carry on this legacy.

A DMA web page has been added to the CAAT website to provide information about available tours and conferences. Please check this page often for updates as the CAAT will soon be reaching out to the industry organizations that have previously participated in providing tours for students and/or educators to see if they can re-engage. If your organization is interested in hosting a tour for students and/or educators, please contact Sherri Doherty for additional information.

The next CAAT/DMA conference is being planned for the spring and will be held at Macomb Community College. Additional details on the conference will be provided when it becomes available.

STEM Activity

Macomb Community College hosted the popular Auto STEAM Days event once again after a two-year hiatus. The event for 6th - 12th grade students was held on November 30 and December 1 at Macomb's Sports and Expo Center in Warren, MI. 1,311 students from 12 middle schools and 14 high schools attended the event to learn about careers in automotive design, robotics, manufacturing, and the technology behind it all. Each day offered a morning and an afternoon session. Groups could choose between the Automotive Design and Engineering sector or the Manufacturing and Technology sector or groups could stay all day and see both.

CAAT provided a session on robotics and programming using mBot by Makeblock. Students programmed the robots to perform specific tasks with drag and drop commands based on the Scratch programming language, telling the robot when to move, what direction to move, and how long to move. Students could also program the robot to follow a line pattern, detect and avoid objects in its path or play a sequence of lights and colors in response to various cues.

Professional Development

The Michigan Automotive Teachers Association (MATA) 2023 Spring Conference will be March 9-10 at Delta College in University Center, MI. The Saginaw/Bay City area college will host a full day of trade show and training classes on Thursday and a half-day of training classes on Friday.

The conference is targeted to automotive instructors from secondary and post-secondary educational institutions and industry professionals. Past conference training sessions have included presentations by Toyota, ASE Education Foundation, James Halderman, Consulab, Snap On, Electude, ATech, Garage Gurus, Goodheart Wilcox, and CAAT.

Don't miss this popular event. Mark your calendars and start arranging for a substitute now. ASE Education Foundation training hours will be awarded for the training classes.

There is no cost to attend, but registration will be required. Watch our next newsletter for registration information.

Technician Training

From homemade science kits to pit box crew — see how Purdue mechanical engineering student, Jennifer Short, has turned a life-long dream of motorsports into a reality.

“Getting into motorsports requires a little bit of luck, and a whole lot of passion,” Jennifer says . “When Jenna Soukup spoke to our Grand Prix team, I purposefully stayed behind to ask her questions and made sure that she remembered me. When I worked for Andretti, I put in 100-hour weeks. Now I have the experience to back it up. I can tell these INDYCAR teams that I’ve been around a car; I’ve done sensor calibrations; I’ve operated their software. It’s having these connections that will make the next step possible.”

Industry Happenings

BorgWarner in Auburn Hills, a global manufacturer of innovative and sustainable mobility solutions for the vehicle market, plans to execute a tax-free spin-off of its fuel systems and aftermarket segments into a separate, publicly traded company, NewCo.

NewCo is expected to benefit from its embedded relationships with global OEMs and focus on the global vehicle part, which would be predominantly combustion-based through 2040. NewCo also plans to capitalize on the growth trends in gasoline direct injection and hydrogen injection systems.

Through the first nine months of 2022, the fuel systems segment generated revenue of approximately $1.7 billion and a segment adjusted operating margin of 11.3%, while the aftermarket segment generated revenue of just under $1 billion and a segment adjusted operating margin of 14.5%.

Over $10 million will come to Michigan's Upper Peninsula in hopes of finding new ways to recycle and reuse electrical vehicle batteries.

$8.1 million will be used to prove new research technology for sustainable mining practices when supplying minerals for battery manufacturing. The other $2.5 million is set for Michigan Tech to study carbon dioxide from Eagle Mine’s tailings facility in the hopes of using carbon dioxide byproducts to produce a new product or reaction.

Nickel, a chemical element known as a transition metal, is only mined in the Upper Peninsula at the Eagle Mine. The local mineral deposits are not just the only major mine in the region, but in North America, as there are no nickel mines in Mexico and the Sudbury, Ontario, Canada mines are believed to be from meteoric origin instead of naturally forming deposits. Any efforts to produce vehicle batteries with 100 percent domestic efforts must be completed through mining at Eagle Mine or through recycling and reuse.

As the automotive market continues to move away from internal combustion engines, Michigan Automotive Compressor, Inc., will begin production of new parts for electric vehicles.

MACI plans to spend $82 million and retain 241 jobs by installing the new production processes in the Parma-area factory, west of Jackson, to ensure the company’s long-term viability and future growth, officials said.

MACI is a manufacturer of compressors for automotive air conditioners for major vehicle manufacturers. These same parts will be made for the electric vehicles, as well as final production assembly.

Focus on Technology

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, deployed a fleet of 100 semi-autonomous vehicles to test whether a new AI-powered cruise-control system can help smooth the flow of traffic and improve fuel economy.

“Driving is very intuitive. If there’s a gap in front of you, you accelerate. If someone brakes, you slow down. But it turns out that this very normal reaction can lead to stop-and-go traffic and energy inefficiency,” said Alexandre Bayen , associate provost and Liao-Cho Professor of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. “That’s precisely what AI technology is able to fix — it can direct the vehicle to things that are not intuitive to humans, but are overall more efficient.”

Engineering Explained examines how "BMW made a car, the Hydrogen 7, powering a 6.0L V12 engine using stored liquid hydrogen, an incredible engineering feat!"

BMW's Hydrogen 7 is powered by a V12 engine, can run on either gasoline or hydrogen, and seamlessly switches between the two. The hydrogen is stored onboard as a liquid, which requires keeping it at -253ºC, or just above absolute zero!

BMW developed solutions to overcome the many challenges associated with hydrogen storage. The video discusses the key car components, performance figures, range, storage challenges, and drawbacks.

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