md robotics (formerly spar aerospace)

client: md-robotics	location: brampton, ontario
type: renovation	size: -

In 1992  SPAR AEROSPACE purchased the former Motorola facility in Brampton to set up its Canadian headquarters and home base for the robotic arm(s) known as the CANADARM – a Canadian icon and integral part of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program.

The existing facility required a significant retrofit to accommodate a 15,000 sq ft, column-free, laboratory refurbishment bay, rated 100,000 CLASS clean-room environment for testing, repairing and maintaining the CANADARM.  The facility also included robotics research and development labs for various other space robotics being developed.

The program requirements were implemented by constructing several large trusses over the roof of the structure, picking up and suspending the interior load points, then removing interior columns below.

The other technical design challenge was to design and construct an airlock clean-room receiving bay for the crated CANADARM as it arrived at the facility from NASA. The room required as pair of airtight, swinging bay doors, some 20 feet wide by 20 feet high with monorail.

The SPAR AREOSPACE robotics division was later purchased by MD Robotics, and the space robotics continue in the facility today.