A made-in-Newmarket project to produce personal protective equipment in critically short supply on the frontline of the COVID-19 fight is underway, but the scarcity of certain materials have stymied the progress.
Newmarket’s makerspace NewMakeIt and the Newmarket Public Library are working in partnership with Southlake Regional Health Centre to design a prototype of a medical face shield that meets all hospital requirements and that health professionals can use with confidence.
Except the ability to source even the small amount of plastic needed for a prototype has proved frustrating.
“We have the equipment, we have help from volunteers who have stepped up, but one of the biggest problems we have is we can’t get plastic,” NewMakeIt executive director Ryan Dibisch said. “We are going to suppliers everywhere trying to get material, but it’s proven to be near impossible. The hospital needs some prototypes and it’s tough to get a little bit of plastic to do that.”
Dibisch said there are a few companies who have some of the plastic that’s needed, but they are taking advantage of the public health crisis and gouging, making it “ridiculously expensive to purchase and not feasible”.
The local face shield project is in urgent need of PET or acrylic sheets, sized from .012 to .020 inches in thickness. If you are a business or individual who has some of this plastic or knows where it can be sourced, Dibisch said he would like to hear from you.
Once a face shield prototype gets the nod from Southlake officials, and the appropriate plastic sheets can be sourced, NewMakeIt’s Timothy Street facility is ready to set up 24/7 production that’s mindful of physical distancing, as well as limiting the number of its member volunteers on site at a given time.
Library CEO Todd Kyle said its three 3-D printers have been relocated to NewMakeIt’s shop to be used to print the plastic part of the face shields. All libraries in Ontario have been shuttered until further notice to help slow the spread of COVID-19.
The partnership is part of a broader move that spans North America and finds libraries and makerspaces teamed up to use 3-D printers and other digital technology to produce personal protective equipment for health-care workers that has dwindled due to global demand.
“We reached out to Southlake and they gave us an idea of their needs, which are the face shields,” Kyle said. “Then we reached out to NewMakeIt because we knew they would be in a better position to do the production. Part of making these shields involves 3-D printing, but the actual clear plastic piece has to be cut with a laser cutter, which they’ve got.”
The bumps in the road to getting the prototype done has been exasperating, said Kyle.
“We had a situation where we were about to place an order and the company said sorry, they’ve just sold it to someone else,” he said.
The library will pick up the cost for the material, and has donated its printer filament to print the face shields. But given the state of emergency with the health crisis, all other costs will be worked out later, Kyle said.
In addition to the critical medical face shields, NewMakeIt is also working to design and produce helpful products such as an ear saver, a small plastic piece that goes behind the head and that is worn with a surgical face mask to help prevent irritation behind the ears from elastic loops.
“We want to try to do whatever we can, as we are continuing to work on different mask ideas, so once we get materials we can produce them quickly,” Dibisch said. “There’s also a need for straps to hold face masks without hurting your ears. Elastic bands behind the ears can irritate the skin, so people are working on making straps that hold masks to the back of the head. So, our other option is to 3-D print those, it’s another way to figure out how to contribute to the community effort.”
Newmarket’s makerspace also remains closed to the public, but it is open in a limited fashion to its entrepreneurs and business members whose businesses are suffering as well, Dibisch said.
For more information on NewMakeIt, visit here.
For more information on the Newmarket Public Library, visit here.
Southlake hospital itself has launched a PPE drive and calls on the community to donate any unused, unopened, and unexpired items such as protective gloves in all sizes (nitrile or vinyl), ear-loop masks with an ASTMF2100-11, L2 rating or greater, N95 masks NIOSH or CE, gowns with an AAMI, L2 rating or greater, and vented goggles (CSA Z94.3-2015 or ANSI287.1-2015).
