Todmorden firm makes NHS visors
AN ENGINEERING firm in Todmorden is helping the frontline fight against coronavirus by producing hundreds of thousands of protective visors.
Canteen Smithy Engineering quickly reacted to the crisis by producing special visors to be used by medical staff on coronavirus wards in hospitals.
The company has made around 100,000 so far, despite only starting the project at the beginning of the month.
Owner Bryan Hickman, 55, said: “I’d spoken to my in-house designer to ask what we could do to help out.
“We drew up a component, basically like headbands without the caps the golfers wear, with holes in it which you could mount a visor on to.
“We found a guy called Chris Grilli down in London who was 3D printing headguards, and when I rang him, this was on Friday, April 3, he was going into a meeting with Nissan, who his brother works for. They’d expressed an interest in helping.
“He said ‘we need ten thousand by next Friday’, which was in seven days’ time. So we got in touch with suppliers for materials we needed and started cutting on the Monday morning. We ended up with an injection mould and by Friday morning we were running with a 25 second cycle time.
“Meanwhile, Nissan have taken on the job of finding the visor screens, so they’re collecting the parts from me, taking them up to Sunderland, bagging them with the appropriate visors and headbands, and distributing them around the NHS.
“One of my customers, What More UK in Accrington, said ‘we’ll produce it and we’ll just charge you whatever it costs’.
“I started on a second tool, because the orders then took another surge to 100,000.
“We are putting in all of our efforts to keep up with the required numbers and are more than happy to help.”
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