Hey It's me Destin.
Welcome back to Smarter Every Day.
I'm alone, so I can take this off
I am in a warehouse
That was once used to work on the Saturn V rocket
and we have just spent the whole day
tooling up a line to disinfect and sanitize 3D printed materials
Those are 3D printed materials that come in from the community
we disinfect them all through the process.
We dry them off right here,
and then we get them packaged up ready to ship out to doctors and nurses.
So, I would like to make a video to show you how we did this.
Because it's one thing to make a 3D printed face shield
it's quite another to do all the logistics effort behind it in order to get it out to the community
so we can fight COVID-19 together, as a community
but it involves a lot of people cooperating
so I would like to show you how we got all this set up
So here's where we're at right now:
COVID-19 is bad
There's not a miracle drug in place that'll just heal a person once they get it
and our doctors and nurses are out there day in and day out fighting this thing
and some of them are becoming exposed because they're right there with it
and so they need protective equipment
but the problem is
our supply chains were so stressed because this hit everywhere all at once, globally
that if you live in a place like North Alabama like I do
you're painfully aware of the fact that most of the protective equipment
is being shipped to more densely populated areas
So a couple of weeks ago, I'm looking around and I'm seeing all of this play out and I'm thinking to myself:
"Man, no one's comin'"
It's on us, isn't it? Like this is really on us.
I visualize the whole problem like this:
The medical community is basically the front line of defense in our fight against the Coronavirus
So you can think of them as standing in between it and us
These healthcare workers need to be protected from the virus so they wear various protective gear
that drastically reduces the likelyhood of them getting sick themselves.
Right now we don't have enough of this protective gear.
These professionals and trained technicians are not people we can just replace if they go down.
You and I can't just step up when one of them gets sick
and you're not gonna get help from an outside community because the other communities
are in a fight of their own against the Coronavirus.
But what we can do is help make them protective gear so they can stay in the fight
But it's not just enough to make them gear, it has to be done in a coordinated way
so that the gear can actually get to the front lines where it's needed most
Makers are naturally independent thinkers but at this moment it doesn't do a lot of good if
we're not making what the hospitals need
Or, if we make this protection for them
but don't create an efficient distribution chain to get it to the front lines to them
If you're making anything right now, you don't need to be off just making your own thing
it's important that you get with the program
It's super important that all the makers in a community work together as a team to execute an agreed-upon plan
so that nurses, doctors and everyone getting their hands dirty right now has what they need to keep fighting for us
Let me be clear
This video is not about making face shields for your community
this is about getting your hometown to rally together to do whatever
the medical infrastructure in your specific location needs together as a team
Even though we're kinda isolated in our own communities
The collective "we" is fully operational when it comes to protective equipment
This is Joe Prusa
he's the guy behind the Prusa 3D printer company in the Czech Republic
They make great printers
Last month, his team designed a 3D printable face shield
which can easily be fabricated using those old transparencies
that your math teacher used to use on the overhead projector
This has been a huge success and has been all over the internet
and he probably heard about people 3D printing different types of protective equipment
whether it would be respirators or even valves for ventilators
Here's the deal, though
just because you have a 3D printer doesn't mean you can just
print something out and run up to the hospital and try to save the world
because these people are actively fighting COVID-19 right now
Just like the visualization earlier, if everyone prints what they think is right
it's going to lead to confusion and frustration
a more efficient way to do this is to get everybody in the maker community
to interact with the medical community through one touch-point
and in our case, we did it through the supply chain
What I recommend doing is finding a leader in your area that's already communicated with a hospital
and found out exactly what the hospital wants
It might be a respirator, it might be a valve or like a test kit
In our case, it was a face shield
So this is how we got that word out and communicated it to the whole community
Huntsville, it is time to do what Huntsville do
We're a bunch of engineers, we're a bunch of geeks, we're a bunch of scientists
It's time to help the medical community
We circulated it in our area's subreddits, among famous local bloggers
and basically we had made this call to action to anyone in our region who had a 3D printer
and we asked them to print a very specific STL file. People that sign up just filled out a Google form
we had their email addresses, so we had 350 people 3D printing instantly and we had the ability to communicate with them.
So I've talked to a lot of people doing this in their cities and they all say the same thing.
Once they established this communication network there's two types of people:
The vast majority of people just do it. They're like, "that's the file? I'm in, let's do it right now."
But there's this other kind of person. They're like, "Well, actually... We could be more efficient if we, like, ran it this way
and, you know, we could do it with this hole-puncher or whatever..."
Don't be that guy! Just don't. Whatever the file is... print the file. That's all you've got to do man!
And here's the deal about this: you're right. It is probably more efficient, it's probably better--a quicker runtime--
Whatever it is... yes, got it. The doctors requested this, so we should all just do it.
So whatever your idea is--unless it's a matter of safety--just get with the program.
and do what everybody else is doing.
So here's another thing you're going to want to do. While your whole team is printing,
you're going to want a couple of pockets of research within your group thinking about two weeks out.
For example, 3D printing is great, but it takes about 3 hours for every part.
Injection molding, however, kicks out a part every 25 seconds
Which is why when a guy named Chris
who owns an injection molding shop replied to our call for help in the Google form
we wrote the check for materials and he worked through the night to design a mold so that his toolmaker Jeremy could start
machining the mold the next day.
One injection mold machine can do the job of hundreds of printers: like a thousand parts per shift.
The challenge is that it takes several days to make the molds
So use 3D printing as a stop-gap to get you to the injection mold solution
and then you can pivot with your 3D printers to another design that your hospitals need.
So we kind of shot first and we asked questions later.
We knew the doctors wanted face shields so we had 350 people printing those
but we still didn't know how to collect these things and we also didn't know how to disinfect them.
We have to assume that every single face shield that the community delivers potentially has COVID-19 on it.
So this is when we reached out and we discovered that there was a guy in Sacramento named Pooch.
I got his phone number from Joel Telling--the 3D Printing Nerd--
but Pooch was an open book. He's created this whole thing called Operation Shields Up
and he's about two weeks further along in the process than we are.
I'll just basically start at the beginning from our intake--we're actually between shifts right now--
which is good. You're going to need a shipping and receiving, so this is like intake.
This person here is cataloging who sent us what. This is the disinfection line,
This is all our stuff right now--I told you I just got a pallet--this is all waiting to be disinfected.
We're starting here with a detergent rinse, then it goes through a water [rinse],
20 minutes in here: get a couple kitchen timers. There's no doubling the concentration to speed up the process.
It's dwell time that really matters on that.
One more rinse after the 20 minutes is up.
Then get yourself a rack--I have a bunch of shop fans under it blowing at us.
After it dries off over there: packaging and stuff. You're going to want some poly-bags probably
that seems to be the best thing because they've been through sanitation, they get bagged up right away,
and sealed and then the bag goes inside the box.
You know, basic checklist, basic assembly guide.
We're setting up a GitHub: this can all be open-source for anybody to use as a model.
for rapid response manufacturing, or whatever we want to call this.
You're a week ahead and an order of magnitude more organized than we are.
You know, before you jumped on I said every 24 hours is like another evolution for us.
Right now, Pooch is my sensei. His name's Allen. Allen is amazing.
He's telling us what he did, how he learned the lesson, and he's hoping that we can improve on it
so we can pass that along. This guy right here in the Zoom call with Pooch took what Pooch said
about disinfecting the parts and he connected us with a local ministry who got it all set up per CDC guidelines
and just made it all happen.
Pooch also recommended something that was very interesting to me. He said it's important
to team up with a local medical society. And the reason you want to do that is like, for example,
the same thing that was happening with the large metropolitan areas taking all the stuff, right?
You don't want to have your stuff to go to one area when you might have these smaller practices out in the county
in a rural area, for example, they need this stuff too, because they're on the front lines.
That's what the medical society can do for you. They act as a referee to make sure
that whatever you're producing as a group gets distributed fairly.
We decided to do a drive-thru drop off point for the entire community's 3D printed parts.
Which is kind of tough to do and also maintain social distancing.
We used baskets so people could drop their stuff off. Everyone who made parts pre-soaked them
in a bleach solution prior to dropping them off to begin the disinfection process.
In two hours we collected 3,800 parts, which was incredible. And you might think you have an idea
of what a person that owns a 3D printer looks like. This is the most diverse group of people I have possibly ever seen.
It's like a character from every genre of movie showed up and deposited their stash,
large or small, and they were all united in the exact same cause.
We wanted to protect the medical community.
There's this legitimate thing that happens to me if I see people from all different walks
and like, differing opinions and stuff... If they all come together and they work for a common cause,
that's good, I get emotional. I just do. Don't know what the deal is, but I do.
This was one of those moments for me. I was so proud to be a human, and I was so proud to be from my community.
Ok, back to the task at hand. Because this stuff is going out into doctor's offices, and hospitals,
we have to make sure that there's nothing on it. That there's no chance that the virus is here at all.
So we had to go all the way through the complete disinfection process.
A group of nurses and dental hygienists came to save the day. They understand sterile fields.
I texted Pooch and he did a down-and-dirty audio recording
and sent it to me so I could play it for the nurses and hygienists so they figure out how
Operation Shields Up did all this in Sacramento.We then walked into the room and over the course of a few hours
they developed an entire system to disinfect the 3D-printed parts. This part was awesome,
the engineers just got out of the way and we built what these ladies told us to.
And by the end of the day we were delivering parts to hospitals for the first time.
So we used today to optimize everything. I volunteer named Elly came in and used her graphic design skills
to make instruction sheets for us--we have disclaimer sheets that we put inside all the pouches etc.
We have a system to build parts, we have a system to sanitize parts while maintaining social distancing.
Rebecca wrote a procedure for everything in the room so we can have any volunteer jump in at any time
and do any job well.
So at this point we need volunteers to actually work this process,
we also need all the doctor's offices around the area to know that this is an option for them now.
They can get these shields. We need to coordinate, which is why I called Matt.
He's been an awesome volunteer at every event I've ever been to in town
and he knows absolutely everyone.
So Matt just showed me how to make a battle plan. This is how you do it. You did this in Katrina, didn't you?
I did this for hurricane Katrina, yeah. We had no clue what we were doing, the hurricane came through
didn't have a choice but to step up and make things happen and so we just took a big whiteboard
and wrote it out and started bringing volunteers in and when it was all said and done
we had moved over 10 million dollars worth of relief supplies that reflected all up and down the
eastern seaboard down into the disaster area.
This is whoever is going to be on the front lines, figure out what are those requests, basically doing triage
and figuring out what's the priority on that, so when we're ready to ship out we know who we're shipping to
and why we're shipping to them. We've got the shields which are coming in, we've got the headbands which are being 3D printed.
by a lot of people locally, businesses, they're shipping the gear. Then we're also moving into the respirators.
On media: being able to explain to people what we're doing and why we're doing it so they can understand
that it works. So we're working on what our channels are and what our point of contacts are there.
Then the facilities here: we've got multiple things going on. All the stuff we've been setting up yesterday
and today to make this happen. Then on the volunteers, all the signups, release forms, scheduling
vetting, figuring out like you know we have great nurses who have come in,
and they know what they're doing and so we have that kind of piece
and then we shift down to the other part, which is not the last part,
but just happens to be on this wall, and that's the funding. Because all of this stuff is going to take
some money. And we've got a lot of people who have jumped in offering services to do great things.
But we need to be able to purchase some of the supplies and stuff we need, so we want to have good vehicles
for people to be able to fund this effort as we work on it.
It's a lot. So here's the point. Assume no one is coming.
If they do, that's great! But assume they're not.
Try to find the leadership that is already in place in your area.
The community leaders, then try to amplify what they're doing.
And then whatever you learn, pass that along to the next community who needs that information in their battle.
When I first started trying to figure out what I could do to help, I needed a way to quickly get with the people
that were working solutions and get it done.
So I have a proposal: whatever your city is, right now, you're fighting Covid
You are
So use the hashtag:
If you just tweet it out, maybe you could quickly link up to other people.
For example, if you're in Austin, Texas:
Huntsville, Alabama
We even made the website HuntsvilleFightingCovid.com
and what that let's us do is it let's people sign up to 3D print, if they want to help us do that,
they can sign up to volunteer if there's something they can do to help us,
they can also sign up to get medical equipment if they're part of the medical community.
And of course, donate: they can help us buy supplies.
I don't know what the infrastructure or communication network looks like in your town, but
from what I can tell, we're not very unified right now.
So if you can unify quickly, in your city, at the community level, and start fighting COVID,
with #[your city]FightingCOVID, I think we got a better shot.
Because this is a global problem, but I believe it is most effectively fought on a local level.
To do all this you're going to need a team with a bunch of different skills. But the good news here is
most of this stuff can be done without ever leaving your home. I want to show you some of the people in
#HuntsvilleFightingCOVID and I want to show you what they brought to the table
to help do this as a team. Jennifer and I are heading up coordination. She's awesome.
This whole thing was Trent's idea and he's literally building it.
Carson built the website and he's command and control. He makes everything happen with these monitors and he's also hilarious.
Alison made this whole thing legit: she did all the paperwork and administration.
Jeremy handles our mechanical designs and Zack at Mission Driven Ministries handles the donations.
Ben's a YouTuber with a channel called authen.tech and he's been the liaison with our local media.
Profmesh is using software to optimize our distribution.
Ellie's only been in town for four months, but she's using her graphic design skills to help us make
amazing instructions for the doctors and nurses.
Pammy is helping us stay connected to the city and Rebecca wrote all our procedures.
Two project engineers, Jered and the other Jeremy and planning our pivots to new designs,
When parts print wrong, Matt makes them work. There are tons of volunteer drivers like Austin.
And Chris and Jeremy are working around the clock to make the injection mold happen.
And that list doesn't even scratch the surface. The whole sanitizing crew of nurses and hygienists
are amazing, and of course the whole maker community who's printing as fast as they can.
This is something you can do for your city, right now. The key, is that you've got to work together.
Now go find your team.
Remember, #[your city]FightingCOVID
I'm Destin. You're getting smarter every day. Go wash your hands. Have a good one. Bye!