COVID Times

We all know the tremendous effort made by many people in this fight against ChinaVirus (leading to COVID-19). While most of office moved to work from home to strengthen our capability when we are back in production, a small team decided to make use of what we have in our R&D department.

As a first step, the four of us-Sibi Mathai, MD of Vista (Volvo Truck, Bus Dealer), Hans Habeeb, COO Suracsh Filters, Pratheek, design & styling head at Navgathi Marine and me joined hands to offer something that doctors and frontline people would need.

Face shields are quite popular in US and Europe, however yet to be widely used in India despite obvious benefits. There are lot of projects available in the internet. After downloading those files and printing them, we made modifications in the design to make it more useful.

Large scale manufacturing

3-D printing has lot limitations in terms of material quality, finish of the product, durability and most importantly speed of production. To create a much bigger impact and in line with the belief that bigger sutainable impact is making it commercial, the whole project is now under Mudita Technologies. The first production batch of improved design, Ver 7, was be delivered on 1st May to Indian Medical Association. There is great feedback from them.

Day 6

Delivered 60 sets to Amrtia Medical College radiology department and 20 sets to Rajagiri Medical College. Our mould work is progressing well, maybe completed earlier that we planned.

Day 5

Handed samples to Peace Valley group who is conducting medical camp.

The mould production has started today. It will take ten days to get this in hand. Sibi managed to get 20,000 sheets from wholesale suppliers, so this is no longer a constraint.

Day 4

Handed over more sets to Kottayam Medical College and Matha Hospital. More samples provided to officials at Eranakulam Collector Office.

Sibi, with his strong network, managed to arrange 1500 sheets. Also, thanks to Tom from Thomsun Electronics, we got 5 kg of PLA. The new materials are giving better quality and comfort and attractive colours as well.

Premy Varghese, Z-Crossing Solutions and Paul from Sparkx3D joined hands to print using their 3D printers.

The mould template design with smooth surfaces is ready. This approach will help deliver 1000-3000 pieces per day.

Day 3

Need to print 250 shields. We need more people and machines woking on it!

Gave sample pieces to supplier of PPE kits for Aster Medicity to add as full solution. Five sample pieces each were handed out to Amrita Hospital and Medical Trust.

Day 2

Another set printed and provided to doctors in Eranakulam and Thrissur for feedback. Once the product design is finalised we hope to scale up further. We also supplied few face shields to the policemen on duty on roads. We got requirement to print 200 face shields for Amrita Hospital and 20 for Medical Center. That is our task for next day! Thankfully Sibi managed to find plastic sheets of 200 microns in large quantity and that will not be our constraint.