Public Invention’s open source ventilator project rankings.
Tracking Open Ventilators
Robert Read (Figure
C
) and his nonprofit group
Public Invention (pubinv.org) are compiling and
systematically scoring a ranking of about 100
open source ventilator projects (makezine.com/
go/open-ventilator-projects). Their independent
evaluation and testing provides important
feedback for designers as well as future builders.
“Building this spreadsheet,” Read says, “has
convinced people that this problem is 90% testing
and 10% design.” He and collaborators Geoff
Mulligan, Lauria Clarke, Juan E. Villacres Perez,
and Avinash Baskaran have created a ventilator
testing strategy and a call for modular assembly
designs to allow for distributed manufacturing.
“Instead of building ventilators,” Mulligan says,
“what people need to do is to modularize the
ventilator project itself, so that your typical Make:
magazine reader can work on a small part of
the ventilator, not be responsible for the whole
ventilator themselves.”
The team has also designed and shared a
device for testing and monitoring ventilators,
called VentMon (Figure
D
); they aim to develop it
as a full-featured monitor that’s modular so it can
be “plugged in” to emergency ventilators designed
by anyone. Find it at github.com/PubInv.
MORE ONLINE COVID-19 RESOURCES: CovidBase
(covidbase.com), NIH (3dprint.nih.gov/collections/
covid-19-response), Relief Crafters of America
(facebook.com/groups/reliefcraftersofamerica).
33
makeprojects.com
C
D
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Illinois PPE Network
Just before DePaul University closed its doors for
the lockdown in March, Jayson Margalus (Figure
E
, left
), Eric Landahl (Figure
F
), and colleagues
“liberated” the machines in the university
makerspace, the Idea Realization Lab (IRL). “We
took 3D printers and dispersed them among
all of my student employees, who are currently
fabricating things at home,” Margalus says.
Eric and wife Sarah Rice’s home (Figure
G
)
would become the first node in a “mesh network”
that Jay and Eric began to put together. “The idea
is to keep extremely isolated groups sharing
information, but not exchanging people or
materials for safety,” Landahl says. There are now
20 nodes of varying sizes; if one node gets sick,
their jobs can go to another node. By April 2,
Landahl’s downtown node had delivered its 500th
PPE. He had also prepared a shipment to go to the
hospital where his 75-year-old mother works.
When Harold Washington Public Library and its
Maker Lab closed, Sasha Neri (Figure
H
) brought
two FlashForge units home with her. Other
library staff brought home Makerbot Replicator
2s and Dremel 3D printers. “The library has been
supportive,” Neri says. “It asked for volunteers
and now there are nearly 20 people sewing and
3D printing, connected to the Illinois PPE network
for pickups, deliveries, and supplies.” Neri also
worked with Dan Meyer, who made the Chicago
Shield (thingiverse.com/thing:4290688), a design
that can be printed on smaller 3D printers, then
unfolded into shape with the help of a warm oven
or hot water. So far, 22 suburban libraries have
connected to Illinois PPE, each one producing 20
to 80 shields a week.
Iraq vet Ray Doeksen was organizing veterans
to deliver PPE when he remembered the 1995
heat wave that killed hundreds in Chicago’s poor
neighborhoods. He figured that, similarly, “The
pandemic was bound to kill people unevenly and
unfairly in Chicago.”
Doeksen and Margalus reached out to Jackie
Moore (Figure
I
), founder of Chicago’s free youth
makerspace. Moore’s robotics team wanted to
COMBATING COVID-19 Maker Countermeasures
Jay Margalus, DePaul University, Eric Landahl, Sasha Neri, Jackie Moore, Jeff Solin, Johnny Lee, Sabrina Paseman
34 make.co
E
F
H
I
G
Facing the Infection
print PPE but had only one 3D printer, so they
had started sewing masks. She saw that Illinois
PPE wasn’t serving the parts of the city where
most African-Americans live. But she was
well connected to local grassroots organizations.
“I started mobilizing those people,” Moore
says. “Now we have four nodes that are serving
primarily the south and west sides of Chicago.”
They began by assembling and packaging PPE
from other nodes; they’re now 3D printing their
own. “We were already doing civic response, every
citizen engaged, but they weren’t aware of the
power of making.”
Flatpack Face Shields
Jeff Solin (Figure
J
) teaches computer science
and runs the makerspace at Lane Technical
High School in Chicago. When the school closed
because of the pandemic, he got permission to
use the makerspace to start making PPE.
Solin designed a face shield that could be laser-
cut in 2 minutes — much faster than 3D printing
— and made entirely out of a sheet of PETG plastic,
without elastic straps or other components. He
called it the Solin Flatpack. “You could ship a
hundred of them in a small box,” he says.
Solin began producing the shields on his
personal Glowforge laser cutter, working with
University of Chicago Hospital doctors to iterate
the design (makezine.com/go/solin). When he
ran low on PETG, he reached out to the Workshop
88 network, who in turn connected him with
manufacturer Triangle Dies and Supplies. They’re
now die-cutting the Solin Flatpack face shield, for
free, at a rate of 2,000 an hour.
CALIFORNIA
CPAP-PAPR Conversion
There are millions of CPAP machines in the world.
With one that he uses for his own sleep apnea,
Johnny Chung Lee (Figure
K
), a maker in the
San Francisco Bay Area, thought about modifying
these breathing machines to make a ventilator.
(Lee contributed to the first issue of Make: with his
DIY Steadicam project, 14dollarstabilizer.org.) He
created two different devices and published his
designs on GitHub (github.com/jcl5m1/ventilator).
One is a DIY BiPAP ventilator that he called “a last
resort-only option” because of the risks of using
it. The other is a low-cost Powered Air Purifying
Respirator (PAPR), which provides filtered air
inside a protective mask or suit worn by those
caring for Covid-19 patients. Lee considers the
PAPR device much less risky.
MacGyvering N95 Face Masks
Sabrina Paseman (Figure
L
) is one of three ex-
Apple engineers who realized the N95 respirator
shortage might be solved with a simple fix to
35
makeprojects.com
J
K
L
standard surgical masks involving just three
rubber bands. Paseman did her own hands-on
research and found that surgical masks, which
are much cheaper and more abundant than N95
face masks, are made of the same melt-blown
fabric, so their ability to filter tiny particles (95%)
is the same.
She then discovered that the major difference
between the two types of masks is the fit: the
N95 mask fits tight against a person’s face,
while the surgical mask is a loose fit that tends
to leave openings on the side. Paseman began
brainstorming with fellow engineers Simon
Lancaster and Marguerite Siboni. The answer,
which came to Paseman, struck her as “freaking
perfect.” Rubber bands.
Once they’d proven the fit with a low-tech
exhalation test, Paseman organized FixTheMask.
com (Figure
M
) to share their DIY Surgical
Mask Brace and raise funds for manufacturing
a permanent version. They’ve brought on MIT
engineer David McCalib to design a new V2 brace
that’s cut out of thin rubber sheet (Figure
N
), and
they’ve partnered with University of Pennsylvania
Perelman School of Medicine to test the fit while
they await CDC/NIOSH certification.
Swim Mask Respirators
Makers with medical expertise are in high demand
right now, and many of them feel called to action.
COMBATING COVID-19 Maker Countermeasures
M N
“I was a maker before I was a doctor,” says
Dr. Randell Vallero, M.D. He and his son Connor
Vallero, a high school junior in Sacramento,
created a PAPR from a full-face swim mask,
tubing, computer fan, vacuum cleaner HEPA filter,
and 3D printed parts, all powered by a 5V USB
power bank (Figure
O
). When the fan turned out
to be underpowered, they succeeded with an air
pump for inflatable rafts (instructables.com/id/
COVID-Swim); Dr. Vallero has worn the PAPR all
day in the OR. Next they developed a non-powered
Swim Mask Respirator, using common filters
O
FixTheMask.com, Randell Vallero, Budmen/Keefe, Jake Lee
36 make.co
Facing the Infection
like 3M’s P100, HEPA vacuum cleaner bags, and
hospital standard Iso-Guard in-line air filters
(instructables.com/id/Covid-19-Swim).
“To patients we may look ridiculous with this
protective equipment but in crisis mode, you use
what you have,” Dr. Vallero says. “My brother, an
ER physician at a major California health
system, is in the frontline in the battle with the
coronavirus. Every day at work he is exposed and
in crisis mode he is more than willing to use the
swim mask and adapted filters, despite the fact
that he feels he is wearing a ‘pink USS Enterprise’
on the top of his head.”
NEW YORK
Budmen Face Shield
Two creative professionals who had started a 3D
printer company, Isaac Budmen and Stephanie
Keefe (Figure
P
) designed a 3D printed face
shield (Figure
Q
) when their local healthcare
facilities ran low on PPE. They called up the local
hospital in Syracuse, New York, and asked if
they could donate 50 face shields that they had
made in two days. The hospital asked them if
they could make 300. Two weeks later, they were
making 1,000 a day in an unused soundstage in
town. Volunteers showed up to help make the
face shields, including a 72-year-old Vietnam vet
who knew nothing about 3D printing but learned
quickly to operate the machines. Their design,
upgraded with the help of Kimberly Gibson and
Michael Cao at IC3D Inc., was one of the first to be
approved by the NIH for clinical use (3dprint.nih.
gov/discover/3dpx-013309).
NYCMakesPPE
Jake Lee (Figure
R
) is a space nerd and grad
student in machine learning who thought he’d
be walking in a commencement this spring, not
making emergency medical supplies. But as a
“superuser” in the Columbia Makerspace he was
R
P Q
37
makeprojects.com
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.