Four Georgian College students are helping to produce face shields that are being delivered to local health-care providers as Ontario grapples with the novel coronavirus crisis.
“I’m just happy to help out because I’d rather help deal with the situation and help assist, rather than just sit idle,” Nicholas Noseworthy, one of the students, told Global News Tuesday.
“[I] might as well be a part of the solution.”
Noseworthy, 25, just completed his first year studying mechanical engineering technology at Georgian College, where he’s also working as a student researcher with the school’s research and innovation team.
“It was a good thing because we have all the equipment available to us, and we might as well help out,” Noseworthy added.
Noseworthy said he’s personally able to make about 300 to 400 face shields a day.
According to Georgian College, the students are close to producing more than 10,000 single-use face shields, about 2,000 of which have already gone to the Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre in Barrie, Ont.
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The rest will be donated to Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital, Stevenson Memorial Hospital in Alliston, Ont., as well as smaller clinics in Orillia and Midland, Ont.
The team has also collaborated with Orillia-based Kubota Materials Canada Corporation, which is using its two 3D printers to produce and supply parts for masks and face shields during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Kubota is supplying the materials and we’re making the inserts that will go with the bands that they’re printing,” Mira Ray, Georgian College’s research and innovation director, said in a statement.
The plastic used to make the face shields comes in pre-cut sheets or in rolls, according to Noseworthy.
“We have to cut them as we go, and then we take them, the actual sheet, load them into the laser-cutting machine and run the cycle for it,” he said.
“It takes about, I think, two minutes or so to actually make a set of two.”
According to Georgian College, its research team has produced dozens of face shields as well, which includes 3D printing parts and cutting shields.
The smaller printed parts are mostly used in combination with the plastic shields to make full face masks that will be distributed to small health units, clinics and pharmacies in Orillia and Midland.
“Realistically, I’m doing as much as I can to assist the health-care workers because they are obviously first in line, at the front of this pandemic,” Noseworthy said.
“We have to keep them safe.”
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