Northwest Iowa — Personal Protective Equipment, or PPEs have been in short supply around the country, including right here in Iowa. But a group of volunteers from across the state have stepped up to try and help fill the demand.
Kevin Wilkinson is a tech teacher in Williamsburg, in eastern Iowa, and he says he is one of a number of people across Iowa with access to 3-D printers, who are helping to manufacture face shields, originally for University of Iowa Hospitals.
(As above) “My wife got in contact with some people on social media and we’ve been working with Eric Engleman and he coordinated with a lot of the cedar rapids school districts got all three D. printers from there and had kind of gotten a group together to help three D. print a lot of PPE headsets. So they’re primarily face shields.”
He talks about how the face shields are made, once the 3-D printers have made the frames.
(As above) “Between the 3-D prints, and then they take like overhead transparency pieces and they adhere those to that so it it’s at least helping with some of the shortage because Iowa was ordering the pieces and so what they did is on social media they reached out and asked if anybody has 3-D printers if they can help print that, so there’s people all over the state of Iowa that are printing different things and then trying to coordinate and bring those in.”
He says the designs of the PPEs have been tweaked throughout the process, making changes based on feedback from the front-line healthcare professionals who are using the items.
(As above) “The new version that they set up uses rubber bands to kind of hook on to the 3-D printer part so that way they don’t have to tie on weapons or anything. So what they’ve done is they’ve kind of gotten feedback from the medical staff that’s been using them, they’ve given kind of suggestions because they have to disinfect these in between each patient visit and stuff, so trying to make them as easy to sterilize as possible as well.”
Wilkinson says a website has been set up at newbo.co/ppe/. He says the site provides information about the program, as well as allowing medical professionals to place orders for the 3-D printed PPEs. In addition, a Facebook page has also been established. He says you can also find information about donating to the project.
