From brain injury to battling bug by 3D printer
A woman who turned her hobby of 3D-printing Dungeons N Dragons pieces into a business while recovering from a brain injury is now using those skills in the fight against coronavirus.
Annabelle Collins, 25, started making and painting terrain for the popular role-playing game to stave off boredom after she was injured in a serious car crash in May 2019.
Before the high speed collision, she had been completing a PhD in medicinal chemistry at the University of Auckland – with the intention of developing new antibiotics –but had to drop out after she started having trouble concentrating.
Now, she’s combined her passions for 3D printing and medicine by manufacturing and distributing free personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline healthcare workers in the UK and New Zealand.
When the coronavirus pandemic began, Collins put her plans of opening an online store to sell her creations on ice so she could volunteer her services where they were most needed.
She’s since provided hundreds of medical professionals struggling to access PPE with the essential equipment.
However, she’s modest about her contribution: ‘‘It’s not like a big difference in the grand scheme of things, but for the people that I helped, it was a big difference to them.’’
Asked why she decided to produce PPE for free, she said: ‘‘If you have the ability to do it, why not?’’
She likened dealing with the coronavirus pandemic to tidying up the house, ‘‘if everyone does the little bit, the job gets done a lot
quicker and a lot better’’.
As larger companies started 3D-printing PPE during the past few weeks, Collins has scaled back production in New Zealand.
However, she continues to manufacture it in the UK, where her parents live, and has no plans to stop.
‘‘I think as long as people are asking for it I’ll keep making it. I wouldn’t ever want to say no if someone needed protection and I could give it to them,’’ she said.
Meanwhile, a Kickstarter page Collins launched for her business, Modular Realms, had raised $31,000 by yesterday morning – more than six times her target of $5000. That meant she was going to have to ramp up production of the Dungeons N Dragons pieces, with about 400 orders to fulfil by October.
She plans to buy injection moulding equipment which will help her streamline production and hire staff to help out with photography, social media and administration.
Collins said while reflecting on the Covid-19 pandemic she’d been reminded of the scene in Lord of the Rings where Gandalf says: ‘‘even the smallest person can change the course of the future’’.
‘‘I do like to think that that’s something we can all kind of get behind. It’s in these crises when the world goes wrong like this, it’s the little people all banding together and looking after each other and it’s that that really, I think, makes the world go round,’’ she said.