WORCESTER, Mass. — In Worcester, the city’s vibrant artisan community is stepping up to help protect healthcare workers battling the COVID-19 crisis.
The Worcester Face Shield Project is creating thousands of polycarbonate PPE face shields, helping to ease a shortage that’s dogged the health care community since the crisis began.
Lauren Monroe, president of Technocopia, a Worcester-based makerspace, tells Boston 25 News the Worcester Chamber of Commerce approached her to find out if a partnership could be created to meet the demand for PPE.
Lauren said it didn’t take long to bring together artisans willing and able to help.
The biggest issue, after settling on a design for PPE face shields, was learning how many items could be produced.
“In the beginning, it was, ‘How do we make 50?’” Lauren said. “Then, it became, ‘How do we make 100, how do we make 3.000?’"
Thanks to a grant, in the coming weeks, 6,000 PPE face shields will be produced.
At New Street Glass Studio, polycarbonate sheets are transformed into the all-important front piece of each face shield. Four kilns make the sheets pliable so they can be formed into shape. It’s a remarkable process to watch, as artisans carefully work each shield.
“The kilns are not designed for this,” Glass Department chief Gale Scott said. “You have to adapt to each one a little bit. So, it’s not a mindless thing. You have to check the temperature of each piece of plastic, and make sure it’s ready to go in the mold.”
In pandemic-free times, this glass studio is a place where artisans produce works of glass art. But these days the studio is producing shields that will protect healthcare workers confronting the deadly coronavirus.
Right now this glass studio is producing 750 shields a week; it will soon be increasing production to 1,500 a week.
“I think a lot off PPE is not made in the United States anymore, so we just stepped in and tried to fill that need,” Scott said.
At the Technocopia makerspace, more work from artisans in other disciplines is done to carefully produce the final PPE Face Shields.
All of this is being done during a pandemic, on machines that would otherwise stand idle during the shutdown. All of it is put together by artisans and craftsman who are meeting a critical need.
“It certainly has proved that art and makerspaces, the community and innovation in them, can aid a local crisis and I’m very proud of that," Monroe said.
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