Advanced Manufacturing contributes to Colorado’s Make4COVID effort

finished headbandA team that included Advanced Manufacturing master’s students Kelly Pickering, Steven Sullivan and Noah Mostow and research assistant professor Garrison Hommer (who is also the director of the Advanced Manufacturing Teaching Lab) printed 408 headbands for medical face shields as part of Make4COVID (make4covid.co), a coalition of Colorado manufacturers and makers working to provide health care professionals with needed personal protective equipment.

Most of the headbands were fabricated on the high-end industrial printers in the Advanced Manufacturing Teaching Lab, particularly the HP MultiJet Fusion 580 and Stratasys F170. Additional headbands were made on the printers in the ME department’s makerspace in Brown Hall, the Blaster Design Factory. The Advanced Manufacturing program supplied the material for the effort.

The team worked tirelessly for about six weeks to fill a critical supply gap for local health care workers. Additional help came from recent mechanical engineering (ME) graduate Bradley Jesteadt, ME undergraduate Quin Guy, ME research faculty Bryan Marsh, ME alumna Allison Bateman and Engineering and Tech Management grad student Kyle Barras.

One of the challenges the team faced was coordinating shifts to run the printers while adhering to the university’s policies for distancing, lab cleanliness and record keeping. “I am extremely proud of the efforts that this team was able to set forth,” said Kelly Pickering. “The group’s compassion for the larger Colorado community was extremely apparent.” Garrison Hommer added, “As a few individuals, we were able to make a substantial contribution to the Make4COVID effort, thanks to the abundance of additive manufacturing resources at Mines and the financial support of the Advanced Manufacturing program.”

Finished headbands were brought to Make4COVID drop-off locations in the Denver metro area. The headbands were warehoused and then distributed as needed to local medical facilities where final face shield assembly took place.