Gizmo Steps up to Make Face Shields for Health Centers

As the COVID-19 outbreak begins to show signs of slowing, Gizmo, CDA’s makerspace housed on the NIC campus, is doing everything they can to make sure the virus does not make a comeback in our area.  

Gizmo recently shut its doors to most members because of the virus, but they have not stopped “making” altogether. In early March of this year,  Barbara Mueller, the Executive Director of Gizmo, realized that they had the capabilities to start making personal protective equipment for healthcare workers in the area. Mueller said that the first request came from Hospice of North Idaho. The patients there had family visiting from other places and the nurses didn’t want to get sick.  

Gizmo is currently making face shields like the one pictured above for local healthcare workers and first responders. Gizmo members started by 3D printing the frames for the face shields, but switched to laser cutting when they learned it would be more efficient.

“What was really needed was a face shield.” Mueller said. “So that any kind of spray from someone who coughs or sneezes or even vomits would not affect the wearer, they would be protected.”  

Dirk Miller, an NIC student with a work study position at Gizmo, jumped at the chance to help make face shields. Miller said that he started by looking at 3D printer designs for face shields done by others just for fun. Shortly afterwards, everyone at Gizmo realized that they had the capacity to help the community by printing face shields themselves.  

“We just started out with 3D printing.” Miller said. “but we quickly realized that there were a lot of manufacturing techniques that we could utilize here that were much more efficient. We could make a whole lot more for a whole lot less.”  

Gizmo started to innovate. They prototyped different designs for the frame of the face shield, designs that used other equipment and that could be produced much faster.

“I think the innovation that happened, happened by everybody stopping and saying ‘we can’t do it that way. We’re not going to be able to meet the need.’” Mueller said. “So right away we started to change our direction.” 

Now, Gizmo is using their laser cutter to cut frames out of closed-cell foam, a process that only takes a matter of minutes. But although making frames no longer takes Gizmo very long, there’s still a lot of work involved in the production process.  

Although Gizmo has plenty of high-tech of equipment to help with the initial production of the face shields, at the end of the day, it is up to the Gizmo members themselves to finish assembling them.

“At the end of the day you’re just kind of left with a hundred of the frames.” Miller said. “It all comes down to everybody kind of getting together and sitting down at the table and forming kind of a little assembly line with zip ties.”  

Once the frames are assembled, the group of six people working at Gizmo, which consists of both volunteers and employees, packs the face shields into boxes to be given to organizations that need them. 

Gizmo has made over 600 face shields for several health organizations such as Panhandle Health and Heritage Health in Kootenai County, and Marimn Health in Benewah County. Gizmo has also given face shields to the local fire department.  

Because Gizmo members are giving their time to help the community, hundreds of face shields like these are ready to be distributed to the healthcare workers and first responders that need them most.

“We don’t need to necessarily earn money doing this and we don’t even need gratitude.” Mueller said. “We just… we’re doing it because it feels good to do it, you know? It feels good to be helpful. It feels good to have purpose.” 

Both Mueller and Miller also expressed their gratitude to North Idaho College for allowing them to remain open.  

“I’m really grateful to the college as well that they’re letting us stay open during this time.” Miller said, “they said that as long as we’re doing what we’re doing we can stay open, so that’s really great.” 

If you would like to help Gizmo with their face-shield production, please give them a call at https://www.gizmo-cda.org/contact-us.html.