MSU Denver is manufacturing equipment for health care workers

The university is leveraging its 3D printing lab to make personal protective equipment

Will Kellogg, industrial design lab coordinator at MSU Denver, prepares a 3D printer in the AES Building to manufacture components for medical-grade face shields. Photo by Ted Shin/MSU Denver.

As COVID-19 continues to spread throughout Colorado, the state’s front-line health care workers are in desperate need of personal protective equipment (PPE), including medical-grade masks, gloves and gowns. So, communities of makers, including experts from Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU Denver), are stepping up to fabricate 3D-printed PPE for Colorado health care workers.

“I’m so happy to be able to use our acumen to help people out. I felt so bad for many weeks, and then one night, I thought, ‘Screw it, I’m going to change this,’” says Ted Shin, professor and chair of MSU Denver’s Industrial Design Department, which is manufacturing face shields for front-line health care workers.

Even though MSU Denver hasn’t held on-campus classes since March 13, Shin sought out access to the lab and got the green light almost immediately from University leadership after informing them of his plans.

Shin, Professor John Wanberg and lab coordinators Will Kellogg and Terry Dreher are alternating shifts in a departmental lab to minimize contact while maximizing output for the dozen 3D printers that have been running since late March.

Over in the Advanced Manufacturing Sciences Institute, housed in the Aerospace and Engineering Sciences Building, the call to produce PPE was personal from the start. Karen Cape, the wife of AMSI lab coordinator Jason Butler, is a nurse in the Maternal Fetal Care Unit at Children’s Hospital Colorado. New PPE protocols have maxed out resources at the hospital, and Butler brought the issue to Robert Park, Ph.D., the Lockheed Martin endowed director of the AMSI.

Park said his team can manufacture around 90 fully-assembled face shields per week with the institute’s state-of-the-art Stratasys Fortus 900 machine, using a design Stratasys provided.

“Jason and I discussed this growing demand issue, and I decided that we should dedicate the full resources of the AMSI to help alleviate the supply shortfall, initially for Karen and her colleagues at Children’s Hospital Colorado in Denver and then beyond, as our manufacturing capabilities and funding allow,” Park says. “This is about the greater good and how the solution has community implications.”

At least 30 MSU Denver employees, students and alumni are actively involved in 3D-printing personal protective equipment on campus, at home or at their businesses. Shin knows of 10 industrial-design alumni who have become professional product designers and are now putting their skills to work to make PPE.

Physician assistant Tamera Wristen, left, and Steve Caveney, administer a COVID-19 test at a drive-through site on the Auraria Campus. Wristen and Caveney, who work for the Auraria Health Center, are wearing face shields produced using 3D printers at MSU Denver. Photo by John Arnold/MSU Denver.

Many are contributing through a statewide maker movement called Make4Covid, an organization that is gathering supplies and policy expertise to provide solutions to the medical-equipment shortage. Make4Covid delivered more than 3,200 pieces of equipment in its first two weeks of existence thanks to more than 1,250 volunteers. Shin’s team produced 120 headbands for face shields its first week before receiving backordered clear plastic for the shields. The team plans to send PPE to the Health Center at Auraria on campus and to alumni and students with connections in hospitals, as well as to Make4Covid for further distribution.

Adrienne Christy, an art and technology support-staff member at MSU Denver, heard about Make4Covid on Facebook and was inquiring into accessing the Art Department’s 3D printers when her chair and dean connected her to Shin’s team. Christy and sculpture studio manager Walter Ware went to campus last week, took 3D printers home and got to work using the face-shield template the industrial designers were already using.

“This project reinforces the mission of the Art Department–providing a challenging and supportive learning environment for those who aspire to professionally practice in visual art, art education, art history and design–while adding a generally unexpected outcome of saving lives,” Christy says. “This can expand our vision for the impact artists have in the community and world.”