Admin/ we are running low but are good for now. But without sterilizing there’s no way these could be used.
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You’re being impatient. Panic and emergency situations are how bad things happen.
James said they’re talking to a local hospital about how we can help. Berating him isn’t going to get you results faster, unless the result you want is the rest of us ignoring the guy screaming panic in the corner.
Don’t continue to make multiple posts after yourself. It’s poor etiquette and just reinforces the panicked sense you’re giving off right now. Calm down.
If you think ‘oh I’ll spam everyone until they do something’, realize you’re not helping. People are doing things. Your posts aren’t helping them do it any faster. Regardless of whether you continue to spam everyone, things will eventually get done, but it won’t be because of you.
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If someone helping contaminates the masks it could hurt many more people than it helps. Especially critical health workers that we already don’t have enough of. We already know there’s people in the makerspace community with the virus so it’s not a hypothetical discussion.
I think wanting to help is good but not sure you’re going about it the right way. Millions and millions of pieces of protective equipment are needed. Not hundreds. Its an industrial sized problem that others that are better equipped to help are working very hard on (factories meant to produce sterile masks and such).
We as makers can help in other ways that might be more meaningful. For example if a maker feasible ventilator design gets worked out we could potentially produce a meaningful quantity of parts. There’s other things people can do like donating computing time.
Or deliver things to individuals with a high risk of mortality, or donate to food banks because many people no longer have access to food (like school meals and subsidized meals). Maybe we can ask hospitals if they have specific needs we could fulfill like things that need to be machined, printed, laser cut, etc. They might need something else more that doesn’t necessarily have to be produced in a sterile environment.
Regardless of what we do, if it needs to be done at the space, it might have to wait a bit, or be tackled on a small scale with only a handful of individuals.
EDIT: I’ve reached out to several open source medial equipment initiatives asking if there’s interest in the services of the members and use of the equipment. If I hear back from any of them I’ll post on Talk.
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Just to reiterate… the BoD did act, they did the very correct thing of donating our Actually-manufactured-months-ago-individually-sealed-n95 dust masks. You know, over 5000. I am not saying rest on our laurels and do nothing… but to say we need to open up to make face covers is flat out wrong. Again, you as an individual are welcome to wear a bandana, a paintball mask, whatever you want. But OSHA and other gov’t agencies STILL HAVE LAWS IN PLACE, and the medical community at large MUST COMPLY.
edit: sorry Luke hit the wrong reply at the bottom, not tagging you, but I think you can tell that.
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It’s anecdotal, but I checked with an EMT friend from D-FW and a surgeon from NY and both were horrified by the idea of using 3d printed PPE. Both of them are relatively young, and the surgeon is absolutely sure he will contract Covid, and STILL declined.
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From a coordinated group on Facebook. Please read.
Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies 1.1.pdf (657.2 KB)
They also said this and I replied saying the Dallas Makerspace could help if needed but it looks like they’re not focused on Texas (for now).
If you are a point of contact for groups of makers or professional fabricators in California, New York, Massachusetts or Washington in the U.S. right now, we have a resource that will help you connect to the exact hospital systems that are requesting help.
EDIT: PDF fail… Google Docs is having issues but maybe this will work.
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Businesses making PPE are covered under good Samaritan plus anyone that retools for PPE production is allowed to stay open and considered essential business. There’s exceptions in the stay at home orders.
- Any manufacturer who retools so that a substantial part of their business is for the purpose
of manufacturing and prod
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I have a Fusion Team Account & made a Medical Project in it people can join. If anyone wants to work on CAD items or just organize the Physables people are coming out with. I’ve imported everything I’ve seen from every site and group Ive encountered on the interweb
If you have an autodesk account send it to me and ill add it
or if you use your dms email as your id it should let you in
https://kevinpatel.autodesk360.com/g/projects/20200320276991631
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This is one of those “great ideas" but the legal quagmire it could create isn’t worth it.
I honestly think it would be better to make and sell other stuff and use that money to help buy things that could be donated.
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Mostly we need to stay out of the way of real agencies getting things done. If we can phone bank, develop some volunteer services, etc. fine. But sky is falling and I would like a pat on the back for doogoodery, uhm no.
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Yes me too please. I sew and can do it at home no problem.
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Same! I sew and can do this at home.
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I did a lot of digging overnight. I’m on the fence at this point about most of the maker efforts. I think responding directly to specific requests is the best option for now. Like the donation of N95 masks. If there are specific requests we can respond to then we should but I think loosely guided efforts may do more harm than good.
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The facts are simply not in your favor, so kindly cease making these baseless assertions. Otherwise, elections are coming up and we have all of 5 declared candidates at the time of this writing.
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The medical industry has some very stringent policies and powers nowadays that are in place to prevent hospital-related health complications in patients, and to ensure equipment quality by following a set of standards. I also posted about printing equipment that could help out a neighbor, but found out that this is a bit more difficult than the simple benefits of creating free equipment for hospitals in short-supply.
I think hospitals are pretty much on their own at this point, because I even called to offer volunteer work in local laboratories yesterday, but the response everywhere is pretty much “apply online for any available part-time positions and we’ll call you.” Things are still very bureaucratic in hospitals, even during this crisis, so we might be able to make more of an impact on the community level, by creating supplies for ourselves, and to give to friends, family, neighbors, etc.
I really support these types of efforts, but the medical industry requires too much damn paperwork to let us help in the ways that have been discussed.
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It is good to have that information. Thanks to everyone for their contributions. We are learning more each day about what is needed and how we can help - and I agree that we should be helping in our communities as much as we can (safely). Picking up groceries for someone who is unable to get out is a great help on a local level.
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We could do a fund raiser and “donate” or “sell” stuff made at dms to donate the money or use the money to buy needed equipment like face masks etc.
I did this for years for Alzheimer’s research. Thank you for the reminder.
The Facebook group is “Mask Makers”.
I’m currently redrafting the recommended pattern from that group into a vector format so that it could be bulk cut on the laser. Ideally we’d need pre washed and ironed cotton fabric to lay into the lasers, but there will be a bit of trial and error to get the ideal size and number of layers to cut at one time.
I am actively talking with the Board on this idea, and we will update info as we can.
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I’ve started running it again and apparently so have a LOT of people. My computer currently has trouble getting work loads presumably because of its popularity again. It gets work every once in a while, and I think I’ve only had one work unit actually use the GPU 
.
Looking at reporting on the internet, apparently right now the FaH “collective” is the fastest “super computer” in the world (faster than the next 7 combined).