Hey and THANK YOU ALL for ALL YOUR EFFORTS at making and providing PPE for our HEROES that are battling the Coronavirus … you are INCREDIBLE. We have been working with IFI to help your and my efforts … IFI is now MASS PRODUCING face shields and distributing these “RobotShields” to anywhere we need them to go. IFI has donated thousands of RobotShields, www.RobotShields.com, to our health care providers and first responders and IFI needs our help to get face shields to these heroes in every community of need in America. Who better to do this than you and I … the robotics community … tens of thousands of the most motivated people on the face of this Earth! IFI is accepting applications for more donations at www.RobotShields.com and you can purchase RobotShields with all the proceeds going to the effort to provide RobotShields to more of our health care providers and first responders … our HEROES! We hope that robotics teams will take advantage of IFI’s mass production and distribution. PLEASE help get RobotShields to health care providers in your local area … your team can have the RobotShields shipped to the team for assembly then distribute to those in need or shipped directly to those in need.
THANK YOU Robotics Community … I am VERY PROUD to be a part of such a GREAT COMMUNITY,
Lucien
P.S. Here is some Background if you are interested:
The “RobotShield” (www.RobotShields.com) is a reusable face shield designed by robotic teams so robotics teams across the World can help health care providers and first responders battle against the Coronavirus by providing face shields to all corners of the World.
The NASA Robotics Alliance Project (RAP - www.Robotics.NASA.gov) sponsors and supports high school robotics teams around America by providing funding and mentoring support to the teams as they participate in robotics competition programs. Robonauts (118), Robowranglers (148), and Epsilon Delta (116), with help from many other teams, have collaborated together to create an open-source design for protective face shields that can be rapidly manufactured by die-cutting the face shields from thin polycarbonate and then bending them into shape. The design of the RobotShield is intended to minimize manufacturing time, and is made from materials that allow the shield to be cleaned, sterilized and reused, rather than as a disposable face shield.
The design came about as the teams worked with the Open Source COVID-19 Medical Supplies (OSCMS) forum to develop ideas to help support the national response to the ongoing COVID-19 emergency. The OSCMS set forth the requirements:
Feature a clear plastic that wraps around the sides of the user’s face and is long enough to go past their chin/bottom of an N95 mask.
Have a sealed top interface with the healthcare worker’s forehead to prevent droplets from dripping down their face.
Be comfortable enough to wear for 12 hours at a time.
Be widely manufacturable with inexpensive and easily sourced materials
After many iterations and much testing, the RobotShield was created and the design posted for public construction. RobotShields can be fabricated by robotics teams in their shops. Additionally - through a VERY generous & incredible effort by Innovation First International (IFI) and VEX Robotics, long time supporters of robotics teams throughout the World - the RobotShield is now being MASS PRODUCED and distributed from their facilities in Greenville, Texas.
Here are some of the pallets of face shields made here in Denver by Team 3200/ Intertech Plastics. Over 100,000 made and more are being made 24/7. This is an old photo, but the number of pallets made has doubled since this was taken.
I’ve put many details in other threads before, but here we go again.
The headbands are made by Intertech Plastics in Denver,CO. We have a 2 cavity mold that we designed and built in 4 days. With it we make about 16,000 bands a day. The clear plastic shield is made by another plastics company in the Denver area, and then team 3200 is helping assemble the parts into easy kits that doctors or other healthcare workers can assemble quickly .
THANKS! How do we go about getting theses shields? Sorry if you’ve posted elsewhere and I missed it … I searched CD, all of your posts, & the WWW … BUT, I’m also a LOT older than the World Wide Web so I’m probably just missing something … oh, I think I mean the “Internet”
My searches did find that you were in the medical manufacturing industry, which is a great resource. Are these “disposable” or “reusable” … do you put them in an autoclave to sanitize them? I’m excited to try a few of these. St. Luke’s, here in Houston, is requesting thousands of face shields so this might be a great candidate so we can offload the RobotShields for distribution to the remote corners of America.
I’m not sure how the distribution is being handled, that’s not my department haha.
The shields are designed to be sanitized after use, with a Clorox wipe, alcohol, or other means as determined by the hospital.
Hey! Nice array of PPE! … the ear savers are a BIG hit in Houston & Dallas. If you search “Rule Cutter Basics”, you’ll find how IFI had the die made. Tom has a good overview at https://tombrowninc.com/blog/basics-steel-rule-die-cutting/ . A search of “Clicker Dies” & “Steel Rule Dies” also gets you some interesting stuff. When all this started, we had NO CLUE how to mass produce something like this and we have learned a great deal … albeit, under these most unfortunate circumstances. Combining the die with an industrial press/stamp is when the magic happens. We have waterjeted & printed thousands of shields for the Houston area while we worked on getting this mass production going … I’m looking forward to NOT sanding the edge of waterjeted shields
Hoping that all of our PPE will soon not be needed … VERY SOON,
Lucien
… And if you’d like to do a deep dive from a tool supplier standpoint then AmeriKen (https://www.ameriken.com/) is a good resource and their catalog (https://ameriken.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/AK-2016-1.pdf) will start to make it very obvious why we stuck with all round holes and not a lot of fancy shaped holes … we desired to do some fancy cutouts but it would have add weeks to the making of the dies.
As a result of Coronavirus, lots of manufacturing will “come back” to America and knowledge of mass production will be a very useful skill for the next generation of engineers. I know that we mass produce LOTS of things in America but I have never really understood the nuts & bolts of mass production and how important it was to America’s well being … don’t be surprised if we start stamping out rovers for the Moon!
