Evan is making shields for face
EVAN Dargan Hayes, a 16 year old transition year student at St Gerard’s school in Bray was due to be representing Ireland last week at the Junior Sailing European Championships in Villamoura, Portugal.
The event is now moving to August and Evan is confined to his home in Newcastle. He is using his time to 3D print protective face-shields for frontline healthcare workers.
He has started to distribute these to various groups. The face shield consists of two parts - a headband and a visor.
‘After looking around online to find the best design available that was open source, I started printing them, one after the other,’ said Evan. ‘It has been getting me up early every morning as I need to have the printer working for about 12 hours each day as it is such a slow process, with each headband taking about two hours to print.
‘ To complete the face shields, I use little protrusions on the headband to hold a clear sheet of acetate in place, before packing five single use visors and one headband into an envelope for distribution. This is carefully carried out while wearing sterile gloves.’
Evan is funding the project from his own savings. He is also currently working on a competition organised through the New York Academy of Science where he is part of a team of four teenagers, from around the world with the aim of coming up with something to help with the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
There are currently about 60 other teams involved and the individual teams have regular meetings online. Evan won two awards at this year’s BT Young Scientist Exhibition for his project on ‘Electric Paint’ and a place at the BT Business Bootcamp which followed in early March. He has given masks to a local GP practice and nursing homes and has added his name to the production database being coordinated by Engineers Ireland as they are gathering face shields nationally for distribution to the HSE.
Anyone requiring face shields can send an email to faceshieldsbyevan@gmail.com.