The Illinois PPE Network, 100,000 Face Shields, and What's Next
Virtually Maker Faire 2020
May 22nd-23rd
We're volunteer makers, educators, librarians, scientists, museum staff, and public servants fabricating personal protective equipment (PPE) for the State of Illinois. The Illinois PPE Network is comprised of individuals from DePaul University, Northwestern University, Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Public Libraries, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Chicago Peace Fellows, and Illinois makerspaces, libraries, and schools. Now serving over 100 hospitals and institutions.
The Illinois PPE Network functions on a node-based system. As makers join our network, we activate them with other people in their area -- a node. We then supply them with the raw resources they need to fabricate PPE. We provide the standards, best practices, and a template for how each node can go about fabricating PPE, then match them with local institutions in need. Our system is based on ideas of resiliency, localism, and fault tolerance: a key advantage in dynamically changing times.
Our effort has produced over 100,000 field-tested face shields and we have distributed upwards of 50,000 over the last 2 months. To accomplish this, we performed iterative design and production of face shields in parallel. We developed the Solin flatpack face shield (www.solinfaceshield.com), which can be punched out of a single sheet of plastic within seconds, enabling mass production. The Solin flatpack face shield underwent 8 iterations of design, testing in the clinic, and redesign over 1 week. In the meantime, our nodes produced the 3d printed Swedish (3dprint.nih.gov/discover/3dpx-013600) and DtM-v3.1 (3dprint.nih.gov/discover/3dpx-013359) designs to meet immediate need.
In addition to addressing immediate needs, the Illinois PPE group also collaborates at local levels to address additional medium and long-term needs that have arisen as a result of COVID-19. Working with hospitals, front line workers, and community members, our design team iterates on prototypes with the end-user involved in our process. We then utilize local manufacturers (sometimes known as “job shops”) to address issues of scaling the final product to meet local demand.
We work closely with #GetmePPE Chicago (getmeppechi.wixsite.com/getmeppechicago), a group of Chicago-based medical students that safely and directly distributes our face shields to hospitals and informs our team regarding which other PPE items are most needed. Based on input from #GetmePPE Chicago and the clinicians we serve, we have recently mobilized a large network of makers sewing the A.B. cloth face mask (www.instructables.com/id/AB-Mask-for-a-Nurse-by-a-Nurse) and are currently testing and iterating designs for gowns, N95 masks, test swabs, and other items, with the goal of moving these items in to large-scale production as necessary and feasible.
