V.S. Memorial staff members team up to make protective gear for frontline workers

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It was around mid March when emergency medical workers began issuing the dire warnings: They were quickly running out of protective gear to keep them safe while treating coronavirus patients.

So when Christine Flynn, a teacher’s aide at Memorial Junior High School, saw on TV that equipment such as 3D printers could be used to produce some of the needed protective gear quickly and cheaply, she jumped on the idea of using school facilities to create facial shields to donate, and reached out to district administrators, who gave her the go-ahead.

Working alongside Christopher Viggiano, a technology and engineering instructor at Memorial, together they were able to produce 86 reusable transparent face shields, which went to nursing staff at Mount Sinai South Nassau hospital and FDNY emergency medical technicians.

“It was kind of a smash-and-grab operation,” Viggiano said, noting that shortly after district buildings were closed due to the outbreak, it was unclear how much access they would have to school facilities. Using an open-source 3D printer design for a shield he found on the web, he set five printers at Memorial to produce ten shield frames each, and then did the same for the five printers at South High School, where he is also a teacher. Six hours later, they returned to pick up the printed items, and Viggiano said they spent the next two to three days fastening the transparent shield portion — laser cut using school facilities as well — to the frames.

One of the great things about the all-plastic 3D printed shields, Viggiano said, was that they could be reused, while standard-issue shields have fabric portions that can become worn after a single use.

Once completed, Flynn handed a portion of the shields off to a friend who works as an FDNY EMT, and they in turn distributed them to their colleagues. Viggiano, whose brother’s girlfriend works as a nurse at Mount Sinai South Nassau did the same, and she distributed them among the people working in her ward.