Lehigh Engineering: Responding to the PPE Shortage with Design Labs Director Brian Slocum

A small team at Lehigh led by Brian Slocum brings you inside their labs and work spaces to explain how they are responding to the shortage of personal protective equipment, and made more than 1200 face shields for local healthcare providers.

Rossin Connection is hosted and produced by Christine Fennessy, with support from the Dean's office at the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science.

Talk with us @RossinPodcast.

Transcript

spk_1:   0:04
Welcome to Ross in Connection. A podcast about all things Lehi Engineering. Coming to You from the PC Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science at Lehigh University. It's a show for students, alumni, faculty and staff, current, former and future. And for anyone who's interested in the many creative ways the engineers are solving the world's problems, today's episode is about Lehigh's efforts to help those on the front lines of the Corona virus pandemic. It's about a small team who responded immediately to calls from local hospitals who were desperate for face shields they needed. The shields is an added layer of protection for their health care workers. To further protect their eyes, nose and mouth from airborne droplets of the virus face shields air, typically worn together with N 95 respirator masks, gloves and gowns. There are vital piece of personal protective equipment, which

spk_2:   0:57
means they've become a very scarce

spk_1:   1:00
piece of equipment. It's 10 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, and Trevor Danek is walking into Wilbur Powerhouse. Trevor is the edited manufacturing coordinator and a PhD student in material science, and now he's also an essential worker. That's because he operates the three d printers that make components for face shields face shields that he helps deliver every week, toe local health care providers. Trevor walks into the additive manufacturing lab. Two rows of three D printers line to walls. The printers, a rectangular in about the size of a microwave. Their interiors glow a fluorescent white, and they're quiet. They've all finished their nearly 24 hour print cycle.

spk_4:   1:49
So taking a look, what I can see is all the different printers that have finished printing in all the finished parts that are sitting on the printers. So each them has a stack of eight parts that are all just on top of each other. You'll have to be pulled off of the printer and then broken apart that they could be assembled and distributed.

spk_1:   2:08
Printing, cutting, assembling, distributing. It's a process repeated by a small team at Lehigh five days a week, a process that began soon after Cove in 19 closed campus and revealed a huge need in the medical community. It was the

spk_2:   2:25
crisis in New York City hospitals that first got Bryan Slocum thinking about how Lehi could help.

spk_3:   2:31
I was seeing things in my news feed about these doctors who are literally putting their lives on the line to go in and save patients, and they don't have the proper protective gear to protect themselves. And that seemed release ahead and concerning To me,

spk_2:   2:46
Brian is the managing director of the Wilbur powerhouse in the design labs at Lehigh.

spk_3:   2:51
So primarily my responsibility is helping students across campus make things.

spk_2:   2:56
He began researching how people were using three D printing to address the shortage of personal protective equipment, or PPE. At nearly the same time, he started getting emails from local hospital administrators. They were worried about their own supplies of protective gear, and they wanted to know if we high could help. Brian found an article online published by Prus, a research. Krusa is a three d printing company based in Prague, and they had developed a face shield that could be three D printed

spk_3:   3:24
a century. It's a clear plastic shield that covers the face, and it prevented droplets of the people coughing or sneezing from hitting the doctor's face. It increased the life of the N 95 masks that they were wearing, and they had worked very closely with the Czech Health Ministry to validate their design. It had been through several iterations by this point, and they were open sourcing their design. The only thing they said was, Please, we don't want to see these on Amazon selling for $50 apiece.

spk_2:   3:52
Brian thought it was the perfect starting point. He got back to the hospitals. We high could totally produce something like this. Were they interested?

spk_3:   4:01
Absolutely. Hands down. The answer was yes. Um, how many? How many can you make and how quickly can we get them?

spk_2:   4:07
Brian Trevor, an assistant manager of the design labs Michael Moore, began Iterating on the prus of design. They were joined by another Lehi alum and his team of engineers at Knoll, the design firm in East Greenville. Medical professionals knew of the prus of design, and they had a couple problems with it. For one, there was a gap between the forehead and the plastic face shield that could potentially allow droplets in from above, and the elastic band that went around the head couldn't be cleaned properly. The teams from Lehi, a knoll, solved both problems more on that in a minute. Meanwhile, the university designated the Lehigh team as essential workers in less than two weeks. After that first email, they had prototypes ready for hospitals to test. Now Lehi is making 400 to 500 face shields a week and delivering them to hospitals and emergency management agencies.

spk_1:   5:01
Back in Wilbur, powerhouse Trevor Danek is removing plastic headbands from the three D printers. The way that

spk_4:   5:07
they come off the printer is pretty simple. It's just a glass tray, and the

spk_1:   5:10
plastic just kind of sticks

spk_4:   5:12
to it. So usually just a good pull. It debates and the car pops right off

spk_1:   5:17
the head. Being designed address is one of the hospitals concerns the airborne droplets could enter through the gap between the forehead and the face shield. The headband is actually comprised of two bands. One sits against your forehead and one sweeps out and holds the face shield. Little pegs on both allow the team to attach a neoprene comfort guard. The guard both cushions the four headband and forms a roof over that gap between the two bands. He then removes a row of slightly curved plastic pieces. They get attached to the bottom of the face shield, and they helped give it structure. Second parts that were printed on these trays are these little bottom support pieces. They're much smaller than the headbands itself, so ideally, we're printing seven feet headband, So we also Prentice set of the trouble support pieces. For the most part, they operate Trey. The machines also print plastic supports that hold the stack of headbands together. Now the support material itself is the same materials, the model materials that has to be broken off. So but I kind of do. It's just a driver to get in between the support in the parts that I want. There we go. Then he breaks the headbands of heart. At this point, I have a

spk_4:   6:39
fully completed and ready to go headband.

spk_2:   6:43
The rest of the face shield is made on Lehigh's mountaintop campus. Michael Moore, who is also an alum of Lehigh's Ideas program, operates the laser cutters that cut the plastic shield, the neoprene comfort guard and the adjustable neoprene strap that wraps around the back of the head. That strap solved another of the hospitals issues. Neoprene can be easily sanitized, like Trevor, Michael has his routine down.

spk_4:   7:07
One of the first things I did was come over and turn on the compressed air for the system that blows air over the lenses on the laser cutter to help keep it clean, open the actual laser cutter itself up and turn it on. Which is this switch all the way down at the bottom. Back here,

spk_1:   7:26
the laser cutters look like big office printers. One is blue in one is grey, the blue one cut shields from P E. T. Plastic, and the gray one cuts the neoprene.

spk_4:   7:36
As I boot up, you can hear the fans kick on.

spk_1:   7:39
Michael hits a button that starts the fume extraction. Then he starts loading the machines.

spk_4:   7:44
My cutting table is over here with my massive bolts of neoprene fabric. So I have an Exacto knife, and I have this lovely piece of old white board that is exactly the right size and shape for the laser cutter bed, and I use that as a pattern to cut out fresh pieces of fabric to place in the machine. You can hear the increased airflow noises. That's the fume extraction kicking on.

spk_1:   8:13
He places the P E. T. Plastic in the Blue Machine. It takes about one minute to cut two plastic shields in 10 minutes to cut 10 neoprene comfort guards in eight straps,

spk_4:   8:24
and you can see the head kind of tracing over and actually those little sparks of light from where it's cutting out the shape so you can kind of see the pattern that gets left behind when the light is right. Anyway,

spk_1:   8:36
the machine signal when the cut is complete. So Michael's progress is marked in one minute intervals by a distinct sound. And because he hears that sound all day long, he likes to change

spk_4:   8:46
it up area. And today it's the Tetteh noise, which is nice.

spk_1:   8:52
The Lehigh team isn't just making face

spk_2:   8:54
shields there also three D printing stethoscope parts for ST Lukes University Health Network in Bethlehem. And recently Brian had to figure out something else. How to make an adapter that can connect a high efficiency particular air or HEPA cartridge to an

spk_1:   9:10
anesthesia mask. Tim is Tim doctor.

spk_2:   9:17
He's the director of workforce safety for Lehigh Valley Health Network, or LV Agent LV. HN gave the Lehigh team feedback on early prototypes of the face shield. Tim had read about medical professionals creating respirator masks by fitting filters to anesthesia masks. His hospital had an abundance of both. If he could marry the two, he'd have a backup solution. If they ran out of N 95 he'd ask Brian for help. Bryan figured out a design on his drive home from Lehi, sent it to the three d printer the next day and had a solution in less than 24 hours. Now he was handing off a bunch of his three D printed adapters for Tim to test.

spk_0:   9:55
Really? Appreciate you have a sense of how many of these you might, you know, Right now we have pretty good reserves on the 95. What we're looking for is we have a few docks that are very petite and they don't fit any than 95. So we're looking at this for those individuals right now so they could get fit tested and depending on how long this goes on as we burn through our head 95 this might be a viable alternative. If

spk_2:   10:20
the connector passes testing. Tim tells Brian to upload the design with the National Institutes of Health, which has an open source page for helping address the supply shortage of PPE.

spk_0:   10:31
I think it would be wildly popular. Okay, because so many hospitals were just desperate for solutions. And this is an awesome solutions you come up with. So thanks so much. No problem we can get you to by

spk_5:   10:46
So this has been really a chaotic kind of rollercoaster ride because it's been exceedingly unpredictable. You know what our needs they're gonna be as well as what our availability is.

spk_2:   10:57
I called him to better understand the supply challenges. He says prior to Cove in 19 hospitals didn't really use reusable face shields and that before the pandemic, many products worn in a medical environment had to go through government approvals. But, he says were in uncharted territory with a broken global supply chain where hospitals now operate in a contingency or crisis capacity. He says agencies like the FDA in CDC issued general guidance, telling them, If you have approved PPE, use it.

spk_5:   11:31
However, if you no longer have those items available, you're gonna have to get creative.

spk_2:   11:36
And he has been able to get creative thanks in large part to the innovative solutions coming out of Lehi,

spk_5:   11:42
especially in the earlier days when the CDC seemed to be changing the guidance, every couple of days on what peopie eat aware. So when I would go up to staff members that might have had on safety glasses as well as an N 95 or safety glasses and a procedure mask. And when I would give them one of the Lehigh Face shields, you could almost see tears well up in some of their eyes like Thank you, thank you, thank you. They were so grateful. I have something that is so much more protective.

spk_2:   12:09
Sandy Marone is also grateful. She's the manager of inpatient physical therapy services at Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Hospital in Allentown. She treats Cove it patients and wears a Lehigh face shield every day. We high helped boost Good Shepherd stockpile of face shields from a 12 day supply to a five week supply. Sandy says the shields are lighter, way more adjustable and better padded than the commercial shields that she's worn, and comfort matters when you're wearing something for 8 to 12 hours. But what she's really grateful for is how much an organization likely high cares about the health of the community.

spk_5:   12:47
So my staff are like my family and our patients, our first priority as well so we want to make sure we're protecting them from any potential spread or exposure. Still having the best things in place to be able to do that means means everything. During this time

spk_1:   13:03
back down the mountain and Wilbur powerhouse Trevor is about to begin the next 24 hour print cycle of the headbands. All the printers are now ready to go, so I'm gonna go ahead and get them started, Trevor describes. The three D printing process is essentially, ah, hot glue gun hooked up to a control nozzle deposits a single layer of melted plastic with every layer. The bill trade drops by 300 microns, about 1/100 of an inch. Then another layer is added on top. The final stack of headbands will be about 12 inches tall. One thing that has struck Trevor about this experience is how fast they were able to get prototypes out to hospitals and finalize a design typical. You would expect this process to be weeks and weeks of iterations

spk_4:   14:00
where we work on his I imprinted send it out, back and forth, and that really wasn't how this happened. It was really quite fast.

spk_2:   14:13
Lehi has a lot of advantages that contributed to that speed. The university has the technological capacity. Brian and his team can leverage a variety of technologies to get the best out of each one and that capacity. It's also an intellectual one.

spk_3:   14:29
We're good at designing solutions to things. That's what I do. I teach students how to make and design stuff. So you know, all of this is in our wheelhouse from that respect.

spk_2:   14:38
Lee Heist Quick response also speaks to the connections that the university has built with the community.

spk_3:   14:44
We've spent a long time and a lot of institutional resource is building relationships, and those relationships are with the local hospitals. I think pretty much everybody have dealt with both at ST Lukes and Lehigh Valley. At some point has been in the additive lab, and I've given them a tour of our capabilities and talk to them about how additive manufacturing convey brought to bear on some of their health care needs.

spk_2:   15:09
Trevor, Michael and Brian never anticipated becoming essential workers during a pandemic, but when the call came, there was never a question how they or Lehigh would respond.

spk_3:   15:21
I have to say, like people have been so appreciative in this process, and it just it feels so good to be able to do something. So when you drop these things off and you see people, you know just just exude thankfulness and gratitude that you're doing this, um it makes it very real in a way that it, you know, up until that point, it was a design project, Really.

spk_2:   15:45
Brian has been talking to students about all of this, and he tells them this is what engineers dio they respond to in need and they use their powers for good.

spk_3:   15:55
And I think in this moment to be ableto do something where you're potentially helping somebody stay safe. That, to me, is the core of what we should be doing as humans, as engineers, as Lehi practitioners, that's the place where we can make the greatest difference in the world. And so it's so exciting to be able to be part of that. It's humbling to be part of that, and it's nice to feel like we can offer something during this time of just total chaos.

spk_1:   16:36
That's it for this week's show. When this episode was recorded, Brian, Trevor and Michael had delivered between 1215 100 face shields to local hospitals and emergency management agencies. They haven't been great at keeping track because they've been pretty busy. Lehigh University has so far funded this entire effort and made it possible, but Brian's team will need additional support to keep operating. DuPont recently donated 1000 foot roll of P E T plastic enough to make 1000 face shoes. If you want to contribute to Lehigh's work protecting our first responders and healthcare providers, there is now a crowdfunding site. You can find the link engineering dot Lehigh dot edu on our podcast

spk_2:   17:20
page. Rawson Connection is hosted and produced by me Christine Fantasy. But there is no way

spk_1:   17:26
this episode would have happened without the recordings made by Brian, Trevor and Michael. They are the ones who brought you into their labs and out on the road. They helped us all understand the process behind their critical work, and I am so thankful for their time and patience and taking a crash course in audio reporting in the era of social distancing. And thanks to Brantley High Tower for help with the script, please subscribe to our show. You can find us wherever you prefer to listen. Reach out to us on Twitter at Rawson Podcast story, ideas or feedback, and to find more information about academic programs at the PC Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science. Head to engineering that. Lehigh dot edu Thanks for listening and stay safe.