COVID-19 - PPE Production
We design and make things at the Product Lab. When faced with a pandemic that was spreading like wildfire and pushing our local healthcare system to its breaking point, we immediately started looking for ways we could contribute by using these skills.
We started paying close attention to innovations in DIY projects to address these problems. These started with designs which were effective, but not intended to be produced at scale. We spoke to others in the area working in this space, who were working on parallel efforts. We tried to find ways to help each other.
Several things happened in rapid succession. A team of engineers at NYU released their Open Source Face Shield design, which was designed to be made quickly and cheaply, and was adaptable to a range of different materials depending on available equipment and supply. We got contacted by an ICU nurse who was leading a surgical mask sewing effort with her housemates (all of them nurses). Coca Cola made a significant donation of clear sheet plastic. The team at Laney College spun up a face shield production project. Something Labs was created to make a range of PPE, including a complex assembly for positive air pressure (PAPR) helmets.
Over two months, we ended up cutting literally tens of thousands of parts for these various efforts. We made thousands of NYU face shields, and hosted the assembly line in our space for tens of thousands of PAPR assemblies.
A significant part of this effort was enabled by donations and subsidies provided by Port Workspaces, our strategic coworking partner. We volunteered our time, but never asked others to do the same - everyone that worked on any of our projects got paid a good wage to do so. Other groups were purely con
I encourage you to read more about this story, and check out all the teams in the area that worked on other projects at the same time