As design communities around the country come together to help fabricate new stockpiles of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), a team at Harvard University is undertaking its own PPE manufacturing operation. 

Representatives from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD), John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health have pooled resources, production capabilities, and labor to produce over 1,000 face shields and 750 visors so far. 

A team led by Stephen Ervin, GSD Assistant Dean for Information Technology, and Chris Hansen, the GSD's 3-D Fabrication Specialist, is guiding efforts at the GSD, where the school's 3-D printers and laser-cutting equipment is being put to work fabricating PPE.

According to information provided from the school, GSD community members are producing the visors and face-shields as separate components and are delivering them to Dr. Sherry Yu, coordinator of PPE Innovation and Conservation Workgroup in Logistics in Incident Command at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. 

GSD tells Archinect that Hansen designed a face-shield prototype last week that took into account the production capabilities of the school's existing equipment. After some design tweaks to existing face mask models, the new designs were approved by Yu, allowing the GSD team to perfect the items so that they adhere to medical safety and standards.