Heroes in masks: Volunteers make 20,000 face shields for NHS
Volunteers Sonya Mathews, left, and Steve Soulsby wear protective face shields they have made at the Edinburgh Shield Force pop-up factory at Summerhall. A team of volunteers, engineers, researchers and academics have made 20,000 of the face shields to protect NHS healthcare workers.
A group of volunteers have given up their time and equipment to produce more than 20,000 face shields for health workers as part of an initiative started by engineering enthusiasts.
The Shield Force project in Edinburgh has been designing and making personal protective equipment (PPE) to donate to hospitals during the coronavirus crisis.
What started with a handful of product design professionals using their 3D printers to help fight Covid-19 has led to a pop-up factory with more than 200 people helping out.
Based at Summerhall, they have raised more than £33,000 to help produce the kit, with help from University of Edinburgh students, academics and other volunteers.
Costa Talalaev said NHS staff had been grateful to receive their equipment.
He told the PA news agency: “We thought about what we could realistically do – ventilators were too complex to produce.
“We came up with the idea of face shields.”
Mr Talalaev is the director of a prototyping company called Maker-bee and he was able to repurpose some of his 3D printers to produce the face shields.
He said interest in the project grew quickly: “In the first week we had about five people, then we went to 15 people, two weeks later we had 45 people or so, with 15 people essentially working full time.
“Now we have about 200 contributors overall and we’re looking into making new things.”
More than 1,000 face shields are now being produced each day while the total number of deliveries has passed 22,000.
They now plan to create other items of PPE, including a gown for medics to use.
Mr Talalaev has designed a hook which can be used for opening doors, connected to a bottle of disinfectant so it can be cleaned easily.
Designs for the face shields were refined over time as Shield Force received feedback from medics.
He said: “One of the most important things for the face shields is that they have to be light. Doctors at the time had reusable face shields that were very heavy duty.
“They were so heavy – they said they much preferred the lighter design that we produced.”
Their products will soon be distributed to people outside the health service who deal with large numbers of people, such as shop workers.
They are continuing to raise money for the project through a crowdfunding page, while those interested in volunteering can find out more on Shield Force’s website www.edinburghems.com.
Meanwhile, engineers from the University of Glasgow are doing their bit to help frontline workers and carers stay safe during the coronavirus pandemic by producing up to 1,000 pieces of personal protective equipment each day.
A team from the University’s James Watt School of Engineering have repurposed an injection moulding machine, usually used to support research projects, to produce safety visors instead.
Over the last couple of weeks, they have created more than 3,000 visors and made them available free of charge to those in need, including shop assistants and care home workers.
The team, led by the School’s Professor Nikolaj Gadegaard, began exploring the possibility of using 3D printers to produce the bands at the end of March.
They pooled 3D printers from across the University to make prototype headbands based on open-source designs shared on the internet.
However, they soon realised that the printing process was very slow compared to injection moulding, which uses molten plastic injected into moulds to quickly produce large numbers of items.
School technicians Tom Dickson and Wilson Macdougall worked flat-out for three days to create a mould template suitable for use in the University’s equipment, which manufactured small parts for biomedical research before the pandemic began.
Now the team can produce a headband in just 26 seconds, and could manufacture 1,000 a day or more for as long as they are required by carers.
Professor Gadegaard said: “A few weeks ago, when it was emerging that carers were likely to be affected by shortages of PPE, we were keen to do whatever we could to help.
“We’re really pleased that we’ve been able to use the expertise we have here at the James Watt School of Engineering to come up with a very promising safety visor which could make a difference for frontline staff.
“The School provided us with the funds to start investigating our options and buy the raw materials we need, which means we can offer the visors free of charge to carers.
“Having our own injection moulding tools allows us to produce at a scale each day which is equivalent to nearly 100 3D printers working around the clock.”
The engineering team have been assembling headbands and transparent visors with the help of volunteers from across the School. They have been assembling the visors in the School’s open-plan creativity space while adhering to strict social distancing rules.
There have been some extraordinary stories of how people have rallied round to help one another in the coronavirus crisis.
And the Shield Force project in Edinburgh is a wonderful example. It began with a handful of product designers with 3D printers and a desire to help. But now, after raising £33,000 and being joined by some 200 people, they are working in a “pop-up factory” making about 1,000 face shields a day for medics working with Covid-19 patients and they have plans to branch out into making other kinds of personal protective equipment (PPE), including gowns. They were even able to improve their design, based on feedback from the people wearing them, making them lighter – a key consideration for something doctors. nurses and others are wearing for hours every day.
Shield Force is demonstrating how much can be achieved when ordinary people get together with a sense of purpose and the drive to turn it into reality. It is the kind of true community spirit that should be encouraged across all walks of life. So if you have an idea, be inspired and go for it.