Michael Walsh – 3D Printing of face shields for frontline workers

This is the third day of bringing you our amazing stories of volunteers who helped keep our country connected during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Michael Walsh has a skill with a 3D printer and could not sit back and watch our healthcare workers provide a wonderful service without supporting them himself so he set about making PPE equipment in his own home. Here is his story

A friend and colleague of mine, Eoin Cannon, asked if I could help out with 3D printing of face shields as PPE at the time was scarce around the country. I saw this as a chance to provide some small element of support to people who were on the front line and risking everything to treat patients with Covid 19. It started off with dusting off my 3d printer at home and printing off a batch of 10 face shields; Eoin picked these up from me and gave them to his brother in Tallaght hospital. When I saw the photos coming back of the staff using these to treat people and expressing their thanks I was genuinely touched and wanted to get these out to as many people on the front line as humanly possible.

I contacted Robbie O’Connor in Tallaght IT to see if himself and the great people in 3D assist could help; especially Chris, Elaine, Fiona, Liam and Colm. 3D assist is a local charity based in Tallaght IT that does great work making prosthetics for kids; I knew that having these on board would accelerate the production of these face shields. He was instantly on board and that’s when things really started to kick off. We went from making 10’s of these face shields per day to 100’s per day.

My partner Lisa dropped down to our local Mr. Price to see what we could use to make the visor screen and came back with a box of laminate pouches. We then spent hours and hours laminating and 3D printing face shields, sometimes into the early hours of the morning. When it came to assembly, I roped my 6 year old son Darragh into making these up (picture attached); the first time he built these face shields, he said his arms were sore halfway through, but he wanted to keep going because he wanted to help beat Corona. Donating our first batch of 100 face shields was a proud moment for us all as a family and team; a friend who is also a nurse from a local hospital collected these at our front door and had tears in her eyes and could not stop saying thanks; it was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. Another friend, Adam would consistently drop to the end of the garden before the start of his shift and pick up a fresh batch.

As our quantities went up, so did our demands for material and everything up to that stage was self funded. To help with this, Lisa put an appeal out on facebook and within an hour, we had over 10,000 laminate sheets in the house. Some local companies that were particularly generous were Devtech, Terenure office supplies and Carolyn’s sweet among many others. We were now at a stage where we wondered if we could get through all of the materials we had available to us. After this success, Eoin mentioned our progress in work; shortly after that, Mallinckrodt pharmaceuticals, the company which we both work for, supplied us with more machinery to help increase our quantities and the material to match. My former job, Cathx Ocean also supplied me with the use of a 3D printer and materials. The combined generosity of work and local businesses allowed us to bring our production to a place that I didn’t think would have been possible.

We solved one side of the problem, we were consistently producing 100’s of these every day from our combined efforts, now the problem we faced was getting them out to the people that needed them most. As luck would have it, there were staff of 5 major hospitals living within 5 minutes of my house. With this in mind, my house became a main hub for distributing the face shields and we had orders coming in and going out constantly. The whole family including my 6 year old son and 3 year old twin girls had a role to play in manufacturing! We had a system of “drop and knock”, where the delivery was left at the door, the door was knocked and you would see a friendly face at the end of the garden in order to maintain social distancing.

After word got around that we were donating these, we became more and more busy and the order book became bigger and bigger. Another local company named Solid Solutions Ireland got on board which effectively doubled our output. We were now receiving requests from around the country; as luck would also have it, my sister Elaine owns a company named Midland truck and trailer spares which deliver nationwide. I asked her for help with this and she was extremely generous with her time. We were now producing 100’s of these daily, processing them and then distributing nationwide.

It was a lot of work but it was a walk in the park compared to some of the stories that we were hearing of people’s time treating this awful virus. Every time we heard that things were rough, it pushed us harder and harder to produce more of this PPE. We had some genuinely moving experiences with the doctors, nurses and hospital staff that we had the privilege of dealing with.

The goal that we started off with was to provide some support to front line workers in the form of PPE. In the end, we produced approximately 10,000 face shields to over 70 healthcare providers as a team; it was a truly great thing to be a part of and I am very proud of the combined success that we achieved as a group. In a time of darkness, this gave everyone involved a shining light to follow.

Special thanks goes to

• Family, Lisa for her unlimited support, love and patience; my son Darragh for his never ending determination and my twin girls Emily and Lucy for keeping us all in good spirits
• 3D assist Tallaght – Robbie, Chris, Elaine, Fiona, Liam and Colm for their relentless efforts and hard work
• Eoin Cannon for his drive, initiative and efforts
• Adam Worth for his constant work of picking up and delivering these to where they were needed most
• Eoin’s friends Thom and Emmanuel for their contributions
• Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals for their generosity and support
• Devtech and Terenure office supplies for their generosity and support
• Midland Truck and Trailer spares, Elaine, Fergal and Jordan for their support