{"id":122251,"date":"2020-05-01T07:58:38","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T13:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=122251"},"modified":"2022-04-21T11:17:17","modified_gmt":"2022-04-21T17:17:17","slug":"uccs-biofrontiers-center-teams-up-with-el-paso-county-to-3d-print-protective-gear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=122251","title":{"rendered":"UCCS BioFrontiers Center teams up with El Paso County to 3D print protective gear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"3D<\/a>
3D printed mask hooks wrap around the head to relieve pressure from the ear loops of protective face masks. Photo credit: Stan VanderWerf.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As much of the country adheres to safer-at-home orders, things haven\u2019t slowed down much for essential employees working for El Paso County\u2019s Department of Public Works. Essential employees continue to maintain roads, highways and bridges, complete construction projects and service county vehicles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their one complaint? Ear pain \u2013 aching, burning and pressure\nfrom the loops of the face masks they wear up to ten hours a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But thanks to UCCS faculty, staff and students, a county commissioner,\nseveral 3D printers and the efforts of the Colorado Springs community, El Paso\nessential employees now have access to something that can help: flexible plastic\nmask-hooks that wrap around the back of the head to relieve pressure on the\nears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy employees are essential, but we\u2019re also not health\nworkers, so we\u2019re a lower priority in some ways,\u201d said Scot Cuthbertson, executive\ndirector for the El Paso County Department of Public Works. \u201cIt\u2019s more\nimportant that our medical providers have masks, but I still needed to take\ncare of my workforce, who are wearing face masks ten hours a day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"3D<\/a>
The mask hooks are lighter, more flexible and faster to fabricate than public domain designs currently available. Photo credit: Stan VanderWerf.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Cuthbertson connected with Kathrin Spendier, assistant\nprofessor of physics and a member of the UCCS BioFrontiers Center, as well as county\ncommissioner Stan VanderWerf, who owns CEM-Tek, a Colorado Springs 3D printing\ncompany. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cScot started tinkering with solving the comfort problem of\nface masks for his employees, and he started wondering if he could get them 3D\nprinted,\u201d VanderWerf explained. \u201cHe sent me a design uploaded to a public\ndomain site that I didn\u2019t think was anywhere close to adequate. I suggested\nthat I could create a more robust design, more connected to our needs. I designed\nit, printed out prototypes, and after an iterative process we landed on a\ndesign that we thought would work for the county\u2019s employees.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Face mask-hooks have two major components: a flexible post that wraps around the head and two hooks to secure the mask\u2019s ear loops. VanderWerf\u2019s improved design features a thinner, more flexible post and wider hooks to accommodate homemade facial masks with ear loops of varying thickness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once they had landed on a design, Cuthbertson contacted Spendier, a 3D printing enthusiast, to seek her help in printing the mask-hooks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have a 3D printer in our lab at the BioFrontiers Center, and I have a private printer at home,\u201d said Spendier. \u201cWhen I heard about this project, I thought, \u2018I have the resources \u2013 I can help with this.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spendier reached out to her student research assistant River Gassen and BioFrontiers operations manager Kristen Petersen for their help. Through their combined efforts, they printed hundreds of the new mask-hook design \u2013 on top of hundreds more that VanderWerf fabricated with his company\u2019s industrial printer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you look at the designs that are available online, they are very bulky,\u201d Spendier explained. \u201cThey are about five times bigger and wider than this new design. It\u2019s so small that it fits underneath a helmet, and it only takes nine minutes to print. We printed hundreds of them in a week using just three printers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"3D<\/a>
The Department of Public Works received hundreds of printed mask-hooks in under a week.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

On top of more than 700 donated mask-hooks from UCCS and CEM-Tek,\nCuthbertson has received hundreds of donated face masks created by Colorado\nSprings\u2019 quilting enthusiasts and home sewers, which employees attach to the mask-hooks.\nThey arrive to Cuthbertson laundered, sanitized and individually packaged so\nemployees know they are clean and safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrankly, I am overwhelmed,\u201d Cuthbertson said. \u201cI\u2019ve pushed\nthem out to all of my employees through the supervisor chain. I made sure that\neach of my employees has two, so they can wash one and wear one. Now I\u2019m sending\nthem downtown to the county writ-large so that all the county\u2019s departments can\nenjoy the fruits of this project.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Spendier and VanderWerf knew the project was a chance\nto give back to Colorado Springs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI thought to myself, \u2018It\u2019s time to do something good for the community,\u2019\u201d Spendier said. \u201c3D printing was always something for engineers and people who are science-y, but now the community and world is realizing what a resource it is to be able to design, manufacture and 3D print something quickly if needed. All over the world, 3D printing has been at the forefront of making PPE where there are shortfalls. We are just one example of that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VanderWerf added, \u201cOne of the things I love about our\ncommunity is that political leaders, community leaders, businesses and schools all\npull together in the same direction. What we have here is another manifestation\nof that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is an emergency. We needed to get something done. And\nit was easy, because we like working together. That\u2019s the beauty of what\nhappened here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Those interested in volunteering to provide masks to essential employees can learn more at the Colorado Mask Project<\/a>. Find out more information on the work of the UCCS BioFrontiers Center<\/a> online. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The county’s essential workers are benefiting from a novel design of 3D printed “mask-hooks”, which make 10-hour shifts in face masks more bearable. (More)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":122253,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,48],"tags":[53,320,86,377,124,332,302,362],"class_list":["post-122251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","category-science-and-tech","tag-academic-affairs","tag-biofrontiers-center","tag-college-of-letters-arts-and-sciences","tag-community","tag-department-of-physics-and-energy-science","tag-more-news","tag-office-of-research","tag-partnerships-outreach"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/20200417_150028-scaled.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mBpJ-vNN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=122251"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139098,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122251\/revisions\/139098"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/122253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=122251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=122251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=122251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}