The Engineer

Engineering collaboration delivers Covid-19 face-shields

News

Urgent PPE equipment is being delivered to a hospital in Scotland following a collaborative effort to design and manufacture face-shields.

face-shields
Team Corran with rapidly designed and manufactured PPE

In one week, Inverness companies 4c Engineering and Aseptium designed and manufactured 1,000 face-shields destined for the ICU unit at Raigmore Hospital.

Read more Covid-19 content from The Engineer

The companies have combined design and rapid manufacturing capabilities and they contacted Raigmore with an offer of help during the current Covid-19 crisis.

The offer was accepted by Raigmore’s ICU unit, prompting the start of Project Corran, which has since released the face-shield design for open-source manufacture.

The design brief saw the team working toward a simple method of providing face protection that would be robust, secure, comfortable and could be rapidly manufactured in volume.

Within a week, the team had sourced materials, refined the design and had its first prototype accepted by Raigmore ICU and Infection Control staff, prompting the production of 1,000 face-shields over the course of a weekend.

4c Engineering’s Jenny Allen, who managed the production process, said: “It's been amazing working with a talented team to get the job done.  Everyone has come up with ideas, discussed problems - how do we have tables close enough to pass the visors along the production line while staying 2m apart? - and got completely stuck in to get the visors to the NHS staff who need it”

“Whilst we are generally happy with the NHS supply chain, at times of great demand, such as we are seeing with the CoViD-19 pandemic, there can be interruptions or shortages. We were delighted to be approached by 4c Engineering, who were able to source materials locally, and produce much needed protective visors,” added Dr. Jonathan Whiteside, Clinical Lead, Department of Critical Care at Raigmore. “These have been put to immediate clinical use in our Intensive Care Unit, providing staff with the necessary protection and allowing them to continue to provide high quality care, during these difficult times.”

The design is available at https://bit.ly/33YS9Ju with full manufacture guidance. The team requests that a design credit is given, modified designs have an equally open license, and that manufacture is non-profit.