A peninsula woman and Haystack’s Fab Lab director are taking orders for personal protective equipment (PPE) from hospitals, ambulance corps, and congregate care facilities coping with the COVID-19 pandemic.
It started in late March as an impromptu effort to make face shields for Blue Hill’s hospital. Brooksville writer Jill Day and the Fab Lab’s James Rutter—two people who never met—started working together, but separately, on that project.
Day cut the elastic for the first 500 face shields by hand.
“I’m still swollen on the hand that scissor-cut over 500 strips of elastic,” she wrote in an email. But she did borrow a paper cutter from The Bay School to cut the foam part.
Meanwhile, Rutter cut plastic with the Fab Lab’s laser cutter.
By Monday, April 21, they’d made and delivered 400 face shields, with another 100 ready to go.
Now they’ve found a different design for the face shield, which makes better use of the Fab Lab’s digital fabricating equipment. They’re also producing surgical mask straps, known as “ear savers.” And they’ve created an online request form for local organizations. Within a week they had six requests for 101 face shields and thirty-two ear savers, Rutter wrote in an email. Matt Jurick, Ben Politte, and Sean Dooley from Blue Hill’s Idea Center are now helping out.
Day started the project out of concern over PPE shortages. “It came out of being outraged that our health care workers were expected to take care of people and not be protected,” Day said in a phone interview.
She created a prototype using materials around her house and her daughter as a model. Then she found a website featuring open-source PPE designs and a list of suppliers. So Day ordered enough foam, elastic, and plastic for 500 face shields.
“I didn’t want to have to wait for fundraising,” she said. “I put it on the credit card, hoping things would work out and people would support it.” Things did work out. Individual donors and Haystack funded the project, and all PPE is free.
She checked the supplier the next day, and the supplies were already back-ordered three weeks.
Day also contacted Northern Light Blue Hill Hospital to see if they could use the face shields. Their answer: Yes.
Day went to work, but soon realized it would take too long to cut the large sheets of plastic with scissors. That’s when she called Paul Sacaradiz, Haystack’s executive director, who connected her with Rutter.
Rutter already thought about making PPE in the Fab Lab. He’d learned the Czech-based company that makes the Lab’s 3D printer had a design for a medical face shield.
After Rutter and Day made the first 500 face shields, Day delivered most of them to Blue Hill Hospital, but also to the Island Nursing Home and a local dentist office. She also shipped some to traveling nurses and occupational therapists, she wrote in an email.
By April 21 they had orders from the Memorial and Peninsula ambulance corps, Waldo County General Hospital, Waldo County EMT, Cahoon Care on Verona Island, and the Emmaus Homeless Shelter in Orland.
And they’ve actually met during pick-ups and drop-offs—while properly distanced from each other.