Embry-Riddle Students Fabricate Face Shields for Hospitals

Teams at both of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s residential campuses in Daytona Beach, Florida, and Prescott, Arizona, are fabricating masks and face shields to help protect healthcare workers amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Image credit: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Fifty students on the Daytona Beach Campus are fabricating5,000 face shields using mylar, adhesive foam and elastic ribbon fordistribution to local hospitals Halifax Health and AdventHealth. Many of thestudents doing the work have lost their regular employment because of theglobal pandemic.

“This is an opportunity for them to earn some needed cash,as a number of students are struggling financially after the loss of jobs,”said Embry-Riddle’s Student Engagement & Student Union Executive DirectorKarin Gollin. “It’s also an opportunity for them to make a contribution to thelocal community, which is also a powerful motivator for them.”

Some of the students whose resources have remainedunaffected by the crisis have chosen to volunteer, and all materials for themasks are being provided by Embry-Riddle.

While making the shields, the students are distanced fromeach other, with a mass-production plan that keeps both the students and theproducts safe, said Gollin, who added that the effort is mostly student-run. “Ihave enormous confidence in our students to problem-solve and adapt as thingsget going,” she said.

Embry-Riddle Print Shop Manager Bob Doxie sourced all of thematerials and figured out the process for assembling the masks.

Matthew Glass, a fourth-year Aeronautical Science major,said making the masks gives him "a mission and a sense of purpose"amid the pandemic. "With a project like this, you don't get to necessarilysee the effects of your actions, but you know that you are saving lives."

On Embry-Riddle’s Prescott Campus, the manager of theuniversity’s Rapid Prototyping Lab, Associate Professor of MechanicalEngineering Mehran Andalibi, is 3D printing face shield headpieces and JaredVanatta, the manager of the Machine Shop, is finishing the fabrication by addingthe plastic shields themselves.

According to College of Engineering, Dean Ron Madler, 130shields will go to Yavapai Regional Medical Center and more will be fabricatedas more material for the clear shield, which is in high demand, becomesavailable.

Vanatta has come up with an idea to make theinternet-sourced design easier to assemble, and that design change may beincorporated, said Madler.

Across Embry-Riddle, faculty, many different students andstaff are pitching in to help during the pandemic including Tanner Freeze, afreshman in Aerospace Engineering, and Alan Newingham, a desktop technician inEmbry-Riddle’s IT department.

Freeze started 3D printing headpieces for clear plastic faceshields at home in North Carolina after his aunt, who is a nurse, said theywere needed. Researching online, he discovered that 3D printers had started tomobilize to make the headpieces, which hold the sheet of protective plastic inplace.

“I’m currently working on printing as many as I can,” saidFreeze, who used his own money to buy himself a second 3D printer and topurchase the clear plastic to make the shields themselves so he can provide afinished product. “Since I started, I’ve gotten requests to send them toseveral different healthcare locations in North Carolina, South Carolina andGeorgia.”

Producing about 24 of the headpieces per day, Freeze said hehas contacted friends who are also 3D printers “and we started to coordinateand organize to mass-produce these and get them out to the people who needthem.”

Meanwhile, Newingham is producing headpieces for faceshields and face masks made of an antimicrobial material that containsnanoparticles of copper. Newingham is the owner of a 3D printing company knownas 3D Dad.

Newingham first made a specific model of face mask that wasrequested of him by Sinai and Mercy hospitals in New York. He then contacted ahospital in Kirkland, Washington, after hearing that on March 10, they had onlyseven days’ worth of masks remaining and had begun rationing them and reusingthem.

Bearing the entire cost himself, Newingham sent 433 masks toKirkland and 111 each to Sinai and Mercy, plus distributing about 30 toEmergency Medical Technicians and elderly people.

Newingham has so far printed 200 pounds of filament, atabout $10 per pound.

“I just feel if I don’t help, who will,” he said. “Maybe ifI do it with limited funds and resources, it will get others to do it as well.”

At the beginning of this month, Newingham switched to makingthe headpieces for face shields and shipped 1,000 of them. He also entered intoa partnership with a company called Copper3d, Newingham said, which producesthe antimicrobial material Newingham is using to produce a a newly designedface mask.