In mid-late March of 2020, the family of members of our team were directly impacted by COVID-19. We were all going through a difficult time and we wanted to find a way to make a real difference in our community.
01
WORKING WITH MAKERNEXUS
We found MakerNexus, a popular makerspace in our community with an established network for individuals in the Bay Area to print face shields and deliver them to hospitals. We were drawn into making a difference in supporting frontline workers.
A partnership formed between MakerNexus and us, and we became part of their network.
We helped manage some minor logistics for them and we printed ~200 face shields for MakerNexus.
02
BRANCHING OFF
"WE SERVE THE UNDERSERVED"
We noticed that our long-standing philosophy of serving the underserved was not aligning with the philosophy of MakerNexus:
We observed from doctors and nurses we knew that they had an inadequate supply of PPE. Nearly every network was directing face shields to larger hospitals and medical foundations, but not smaller hospitals, front-line businesses, and senior homes.
Despite the great experience we had working under MakerNexus, we branched off, looking to form an initiative of our own, with a similar network to MakerNexus but with a focus on the underserved.
03
RE-DESIGNING
"OUR ROBOTICS EXPERIENCE HAS
REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS"
During our experience printing for MakerNexus, we found that popular face shield designs were not optimized for efficiency; they took very long to print and required too many resources with dwindling supply chains. We knew that our first step was to create the best possible face shield.
DESIGN GOALS
OUR END
PRINT SPEED
BALANCE BETWEEN HUMAN AND MACHINE LABOR
MATERIAL EFFICIENT
FRONTLINE END
COMFORT
PROTECTION
WASHABILITY