{"id":26447,"date":"2020-04-30T14:18:30","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T18:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26447"},"modified":"2020-05-07T18:08:37","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T22:08:37","slug":"williams-student-soups-up-3d-printer-to-help-the-covid-19-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/williams-student-soups-up-3d-printer-to-help-the-covid-19-fight\/","title":{"rendered":"Williams Student soups up 3D printer to help the COVID-19 fight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the fight against COVID-19, time is of the essence \u2013\njust ask Luka Miljanov.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luka, a Grade 11 student at Dr. G.W. Williams Secondary\nSchool, wasn\u2019t content to spend the pandemic sitting on the sidelines at home,\nparticularly a home equipped with a homemade 3D printer. So, he decided to put\nhis resources to use, helping local retirement homes, including Chartwell\nAurora which is battling an outbreak of its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After hearing about shortages of Personal Protective\nEquipment (PPE) over what turned out to be an extended March Break for students\nacross Ontario, Luka began looking for ways he could help, and he\u2019s now\nproducing clear plastic face shields for frontline workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just love the engineering side of things, tinkering\nwith stuff and experimenting,\u201d says Luka of looking for ways to help. \u201cI was\nlooking at COVID from the beginning and thinking, \u2018How can I possibly help out\nwith something of this scale? I have two 3D printers sitting there doing\nnothing all day, so if I have that, why not put them through as much use as I\npossibly can?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI looked online to see what other people were doing and\nthey had different designs of parts they were printing. People were printing\nstuff like tools [to stop] face masks cutting into doctors\u2019 ears, but the one\nthat caught my attention was a different initiative printing face masks. I\nthought I could do something similar and experimented with a couple of\ndifferent designs that were available, and I settled on the one I am using\nnow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Settling on the current model was a matter of trial and\nerror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initial concepts required\napproximately twelve hours to complete on a standard 3D printer, requiring\nnearly 30,000 lines of computer code. Experimenting with different models, Luka\nwas able to reduce the print time of one mask to approximately 60 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt took two or three days of\nexperimenting, mostly trying to keep speed high while maintaining structural\nstability for it because the less you print the less quality you have,\u201d he\nexplains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, it was a winning formula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Setting a personal goal of\nproducing 100 masks during the pandemic, the first batches have been\ndistributed to Chartwell Aurora and Chartwell Hollandview Trail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHollandview Trail took five\nbecause they don\u2019t have COVID cases at the moment and they have another staff\nmember\u2019s husband who is making some,\u201d says Luka\u2019s mom, Natasha. \u201cWe went to\nChartwell Aurora where they actually have COVID cases and they did not have\nface shields, they had everything but. They were grateful to get anything like\na face shield; they had their hair covered, their masks on, full gowns, but\nnothing that would cover the eyes or the face.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that the first batches of\nmasks are in the hands of the frontline workers that need them the most, Luka\nsays he\u2019s proud to have made a difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt means a lot to me to know\nthat something I build and put a lot of time and effort into is potentially\ngoing out and saving lives, especially because I have a family member \u2013 my\ngrandmother \u2013 who is in the health care [sector] and I know how caring she is.\nShe is very involved and that rubbed off on me. I wanted to help as much as I\ncan. If I was a person on the frontlines, I would hate to be without protective\nequipment. I can\u2019t even imagine how terrible that must be, so I wanted to do\nanything I could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c100 masks is just the goal,\nbut I am going to try and make as many as I possibly can. I am getting offers\nfor materials just from a lot of different people, so I would like to make as\nmany as possible depending on the length of the COVID-19 pandemic and\neverything that is needed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have access to a 3D printer from home, Luka encourages people to visit Print to Protect initiative at printtoprotect.wixsite.com<\/a> for ideas on what they can do to help fight the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Face shields distributed to Chartwell Aurora.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/2020-04-30-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6Sz","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-13 10:23:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}