SUNY Poly manufacturing personal protective equipment to help area health-care workers

SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) recently announced it’s using 3D printing technology to manufacture parts for face shields to be used by area health-care workers.

It’s part of an effort to help deal with a “national shortage” of personal protective equipment (PPE) for critical medical staff, SUNY Poly said in a release.

Oneida County provided up to $20,000 for the project, Steve Ference, director of university communication at SUNY Poly, tells CNYBJ in an email message.

In addition, the Wal-Mart Distribution Center in Marcy provided PPE that will also be distributed.

It’s “just one of several ways the institution is assisting” to help slow the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), in addition to donating bedding to support area medical personnel.

SUNY Poly nanobioscience professor Nate Cady is printing face-shield components round-the-clock, the school said. Cady also serves as executive director of the SUNY Applied Materials Research Institute (SAMRI), in Albany.

The parts are being fabricated based on a design shared by a team at SUNY New Paltz who will assemble and distribute the face shields to front medical workers.

“For me, this is a great opportunity to be part of the larger effort against COVID-19, and I am thankful for our partnership with SUNY New Paltz which provided the plans that have been successfully used to print this invaluable PPE,” Cady said.

Michael Carpenter, associate professor and interim dean of SUNY Poly’s College of Engineering, said with current social distancing health guidelines in place, 3D printing labs at the institution’s Center for Global Advanced Manufacturing (CGAM) in Utica are prototyping the New Paltz design and will be able to produce 50 face shields during normal working hours each day.

Using a laser cutter, hundreds of additional face shields can be fabricated per day.

In response to the latter effort, one of the FIRST Tech Challenge teams, Enderbots 5484, based in Corning, has already 3D printed dozens of PPE components which were sent to SUNY Poly for distribution to health-care workers, and more are expected from the dozen teams that have been recruited to assist.

Additionally, hundreds of face shields will be produced with tools used by Brian Taylor, manager of engineering-support services, and his team at the Albany campus.

SUNY Poly has also donated 140 sets of sheets, blankets, pillows, and towels it had in its inventory to Mohawk Valley Health System for them to use in the Burrstone House as doctors rest between shifts, the school noted.

On the academic front, students who are enrolled in SUNY Poly’s mathematical modeling class are working to couple epidemiological models with models of social-pandemic responses to “analyze and evaluate” different possible social responses based on metrics and statistics.

Their goal is to ultimately show how certain forms of social distancing can mitigate risks to individuals’ mental health, per the release.