Engineering collaboration delivers Covid-19 face-shields

In one week, Inverness companies 4c Engineering and Aseptium designed and manufactured 1,000 face-shields destined for the ICU unit at Raigmore Hospital.

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The companies have combined design and rapid manufacturing capabilities and they contacted Raigmore with an offer of help during the current Covid-19 crisis.

The offer was accepted by Raigmore’s ICU unit, prompting the start of Project Corran, which has since released the face-shield design for open-source manufacture.

The design brief saw the team working toward a simple method of providing face protection that would be robust, secure, comfortable and could be rapidly manufactured in volume.

Within a week, the team had sourced materials, refined the design and had its first prototype accepted by Raigmore ICU and Infection Control staff, prompting the production of 1,000 face-shields over the course of a weekend.

4c Engineering’s Jenny Allen, who managed the production process, said: “It's been amazing working with a talented team to get the job done.  Everyone has come up with ideas, discussed problems - how do we have tables close enough to pass the visors along the production line while staying 2m apart? - and got completely stuck in to get the visors to the NHS staff who need it”