The engineering team at The JCB Academy have combined resources with a colleague from Thistley Hough Academy in Stoke-on-Trent and over the last few days have been busy producing PPE face visors. The face visors provide a barrier to acutely-expelled aerosols of body fluids and are commonly used as an alternative to goggles as they confer protection to a larger area of the face.
Originally we were producing the PPE face visors with 3D printing technology but it was taking over 1hr per unit. We looked into other options available and we found the most efficient way was to laser cut the visors from polypropylene sheets and use thin clear plastic for the actual face screen. This has enabled us to produce more units per day, on Monday we managed to produce 70.
The face visors have been delivered to a range of different organsations throughout Derbyshire and Staffordshire such as Burton A&E, Harplands Hospital, West Midlands Ambulance Service and other local NHS establishments. Production also continued over the weekend with 100 clear PVC visors been produced and distributed to support other volunteer groups who have been producing face masks on their own 3D printers. As well as production of the face masks we also gave out 20 Honeywell Clearways face masks that were donated by The JCB Academy Apprentice Team from their PPE stores, these were delivered to the Emergency Department at Queen’s Hospital Burton.
Thank you to all of those who supported us with sourcing materials, we have had many leads that we are still following up and hope to be able to re-stock by Thursday.
