Photography by Kevin Poenicke
As the number of COVID-19 cases increased in the St. Louis area, a multidisciplinary group of Washington University employees launched a Maker Task Force to create equipment and technology needed by hospitals or frontline workers during the pandemic. In early conversations between its executive team, it was evident they needed to connect with others on campus who had laser cutters or 3-D printers to make isolation gowns, surgical masks, face shields, N95 respirators and methods to disinfect them, and emergency ventilators and replacement parts.
“One of the next things we did was sit down and brainstormed: What are the needs? What are people running low of, here or nationally? What do we need to be thinking about? One of the things that rose to the surface quickly in the discussions was the ventilators,” says Philip Bayly, chair of mechanical engineering and materials science at Wash. U.
So he looked into it and reached out to his former student Jerry Halley, who is now chief engineer at a local aerospace parts manufacturer. “I knew he was one of the best engineers who understood manufacturing, so I thought he'd be an ideal person to help us figure out how to make something quickly and inexpensively—but most importantly quickly—that might help us address a shortage in ventilators.” Looking for someone who understood electronics, they tapped Dennis Mell, an electrical engineer and professor at Wash. U., and pulled in machinist John Kreitler, of the Instrument Machine Shop at the School of Medicine where four other employees would work on the portable ventilators.
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Photography by Kevin Poenicke
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Photography by Kevin Poenicke
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Those portable ventilators automate the squeezing of resuscitation bags, like the ones used by EMTs to manually squeeze and force air into a patient’s lungs, most often as a short-term solution while someone is in an ambulance or helicopter. Using the device the team made, “We can control how big of a breath a person is taking and how frequently air is forced in,” Bayly says. “It’s a very simple device. All it is is forcing air in and out of the lungs over and over again to keep the patient alive.”
“We were worried about the torque of the motor,” says Kevin Poenicke, a machinist constructing the ventilators. “You have to find a motor that is easily programmable, that is cheap, that is small enough to fit in a compact system but big enough to have enough torque to drive it. But we found out we didn't need that. Then we were worried about people getting their fingers in it and pinching them.” Another challenge: tuning the motor. “We have to run the motor at a specific rpm [revolutions per minute] and arc lengths to compress the bag enough to where it'll give someone a full breath, but not enough to pop a lung,” Poenicke says.
Photography by Kevin Poenicke
The prototype, costing less than $2,000 in parts, consists of basic materials such as aluminum, screws, and bearings from McMaster-Carr. The emergency ventilators one specialty piece is its motor, sourced from Teknic. The advantage, Bayly says, is that they're not things that are necessarily in short supply right now because they're not part of a standard, a medical response.
In early April, the team put the prototype together. Dr. Broc Burke, an instructor in anesthesiology, and others at the School of Medicine gave them feedback. The next week the ventilators were tested in a clinical simulation lab.
“We’re trying to make sure the machine has longevity,” Poenicke says.
“The teams we’ve managed to put together: clinical people together with engineers, and then the team that within that, that worked on ventilators—no one of us could have accomplished much of this without each other,” Bayly says. “Those guys really found each other and gelled into a very dynamic team very quickly.”
At press time, Bayly says that from his understanding there’s still a need for ventilators nationally and in certain areas of the country. “Our goal was to make this solution available, have it on the shelf in case it was needed. And if it's needed, they can pull it off the shelf and deploy it,” he says. “It’s very motivating to get out of bed and work on something that has a potentially immediate benefit to people who need the solution.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by Tim McNabb, who co-owns Gateway Escape Rooms with his wife Gemey McNabb. McNabb designs and builds his escape rooms’ puzzles, fixtures, or props using 3-D printers at MADE maker space, where he’s a member. “Before all of this hit, we were having our best year ever. Revenue was up 50 percent, bookings were up 25 percent,” McNabb says. With the escape rooms closed to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, he's found a new purpose in the meantime: building intubation hoods.
Courtesy of Tim McNabb
An intubation hood created by Tim McNabb
Someone had asked MADE Makerspace if anyone had the capability to make the hoods, which, when placed over a patient during intubation, provide an extra barrier between a doctor and a COVID-19 patient.
“I thought, We’ll try this," says McNabb, who was an engineer in the U.S. Army. “I’m a maker. There’s a maker spirit. There is a sense of, ‘Oh, I can make that,’ and you come up with ways to figure out how.” He also called upon his experience illustrating medical device innovations to help inventors describe their inventions to the U.S. Patent Office.
McNabb made his first intubation hood out of foam core; the second out of scrap plastic glued together. He consulted medical professionals—first, two nurses who were staying in his Airbnb, then Mercy’s Dr. Edward Ferguson—on designs. One advised him not to use surgical tape because it could carry germs, so he shifted to a wedged mortise and tenon design. He regularly posted design updates to a Facebook group where users weighed in on the best materials. The hoods went from prototype to final product within two weeks. “That’s extremely fast,” McNabb says, “and it was possible because—a combination of—having the equipment that can make a substantial quantity quickly, and a lot of feedback from smart people.”
Now McNabb sells the intubation hoods, made of laser-cut acrylic, for $200 (production costs $100 in material alone). The hoods ship flat, to be assembled by those who purchase it. One of its advantages, he says, is that his design is easy to take apart and clean.
Courtesy of Made/Tim McNabb
So far McNabb has donated the hoods to health care professionals who’ve reached out. Most of his hoods, though, have been purchased by individuals who later donated them to hospitals as far as California and Maryland and as close as Mercy Hospital South and DePaul Hospital.
“I had somebody purchase one for his daughter who’s an emergency room doctor [in the BJC HealthCare network]. He wanted her to have this unit so she could be protected,” he says.
The hoods are not the first equipment McNabb has tried to make to fill voids caused by the pandemic—he first created ultraviolet sterilization boxes. Though his prototypes are not being used by medical professionals, he's taken what he's learned to benefit his escape rooms. He built sterilization cabinets that the rooms' props can be placed in and lamps that are wheeled into rooms to sterilize them in between games, once McNabb has reopened his Sappington amusement center.
“We have an unprecedented public health problem,” he says. “We have to do everything we can to make sure that our health care workers are protected, so they can best protect the people who need to be taken care of. It’s all hands on deck.”
