We Searched All Through the Land, but no PETG Could be Found

We Searched All Through the Land, but no PETG Could be Found

by Aaron Goldstein

The DMV maker community began building and donating face shields because traditional industry was not building them fast enough to meet the needs of the medical community. A couple of weeks ago, just one single hospital in Maryland needed 2,000 and could not find a supplier. We thought that traditional industry would quickly come online, build enough shields, and we would move on to other PPE projects. Unfortunately, we were only partially correct.

It turns out that traditional industry is still not making enough shields, but they did ramp up and buy all the transparent plastic we were using (.020” and .030” PETG). We called every shop within 100+ miles of Nova Labs and several online companies, but none had any in stock. A few of them wrote down our names to call us back when the sheets came in from China; they guessed it would be late April or May.

A few weeks later we got an interesting call. Polymershapes in Jessup, Maryland had sheets with opaque streaks and distortion due to a manufacturing error; did we want them? They gave us four sheets to test and we were able to use a good percentage of each. Moreover, we have the human power to check each shield and discard the ones with defects. A couple of conversations later, they were willing to gift us 154 sheets. Even if we change the design and some of the plastic goes to waste, that is still thousands of shields!

When we went to collect the plastic, I said they could leave the pallet in the parking lot and we would do the rest; we’re not paying, so they should focus on their customers. Instead, their manager pulled out the forklift and helped us fold each piece into our vehicles. On the way back to LaserThing.com to deliver the sheets, we donated 100 shields we made from the four test sheets to Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring. Click here to see more face shields images

Find me on Nova Labs Slack: @Aaron

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