Cut out the pieces. Remove pattern

store had to pivot in mid-March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “We closed our doors on March 13 with no idea what to do,” says Schildkret. “We sat at home and waited for a path.” The path appeared and led him and his business partner Thomas Brodahl to making face masks. “I realized I had to reorganize and retrofit my production immediately. A couple days later, I started prototyping,” Schildkret says. The outside layers of their masks are silk, while the straps are made of linen and are meant to be tied around the back of the head. For a filter, they’re using a double-layer of melt-blown, non-woven fabric often used in air filters. “It makes a really comfortable, Late Sunday Afternoon-style mask. It’s a one-for-one program, meaning for every mask you purchase for $22, one will be donated to health care workers,” says Schildkret. They hope to have completed approximately 2,000 masks by the end of the week. They are also making masks available to the homeless in Venice.

Protective Gear from a 3D Printer

fellow health care workers were in need of PPE, there was no way he was going to sit by idly. “My business is essentially shut down until April 19,” says Fung. “I thought, okay, what am I going to do now?” Given that his dental practice in Culver City has a 3D printer, an idea sparked: “I thought, why don’t I print a mask?” he says. After crowdsourcing a design for a standard facemask then 3D printing it, he learned that the pre-made filters from 3M were completely sold out. He needed a new plan. When a large pediatric hospital reached out to him saying they were in need of face shields, he contacted several 3D printing companies in Orange County and the Inland Empire to help fabricate the face shields. “The turnaround time is about 48 hours and can make about 500 a day,” says Fung, who’s had over 1,500 face shields manufactured. The face shield is the first barrier between the virus and medical professional, with the mask as the second barrier. Since the standard practice is one shield for one patient, the need is in the tens of thousands. “If everyone at home [with a 3D printer] could make 10 of these, we could make thousands of them,” he says.

When Playa Vista-based dentist Lawrence Fung discovered his

Academics to the Rescue

Normally, the 3D printers that Santa Monica College professor Tram Dang uses for her engineer ing classes are making parts for robotic arms, or other creative inventions students have dreamt up. Now instead of lying dormant for the rest of the semester, they’re making open-sourced N95 masks and face shield headbands for medical profes sionals at Keck School of Medicine of USC and Kaiser Permanente Los Feliz. “I hate having things sit around and not being used,” says Dang, whose brother is an ICU doctor. So soon after classes moved online this March and a call went out from UCLA for PPE produc tion help, Dang brought three 3D printers home, set them up in her garage, and wired up some extra security cameras so that she could “live stream” and monitor the printers’ progress on her home’s wireless network internally. Since then, she’s been printing anywhere between 10 headbands and six face masks per day between two printers and has enlisted the help of a network of professors, including SMC Interaction Design professor Maxim Safioulline and art professor Christopher Badger. “This whole thing is bigger than me,” says Dang, whose home will serve as a collection point for printed materials before being delivered to hospitals for assembly and sanitation. “It’s big ger than the individual organization, and I think to get through it, we all have to sort of work together, whether that means stay at home and do nothing or stay at home and 3D print.” At the Badger household, 3D printing is a family affair as two 3D printers run “round the clock” in the family’s shed. “My wife and two kids are helping to check the filaments,” says Badger, referring to the plastic material with which the masks are made. “We’re running prints 24 hours a day. “The biggest thing about these masks is they’re reusable,” he continues, “There’s a small [HEPA] filter that’s embedded in the mask that can be thrown away, so the rest of the mask can be sanitized or reused.” “I have about 30 of them right now,” he adds. “I’m going to keep those machines running until someone says stop, or I run out of materials.”

Delivering Masks Doorto-Door

When District 11 City Councilman Mike Bonin’s Field Deputy Nisa Kove learned that seniors living in Marina del Rey’s Marina Manor Senior Apartments didn’t have access to face masks, she wanted to help. She discovered and reached out to a regional organization working with 25 sewists across Los Angeles called Project Mask LA, whose mission is to “mask LA” safely while leaving the N95 masks available for the pros. In two days’ time, Kove had 200 face masks ready to be distributed. “The masks we got were from a costumer, so most of the people that Project Mask LA are working with have master sewing skills,” says Kove. Kove, along with Michelle Manos and Chelsea Stough of Project Mask LA, actually went door-to-door themselves to hand out the masks at Marina Manor recently. “We were prepared with our gloves and masks and wipes. They were really grateful. People started coming out on their balcony,” says Kove. “A lot of these people aren’t even leaving their apartments, they’re getting Meals on Wheels deliveries and are afraid to go out, honestly.” She also made sure the residents knew they needed to wash their masks daily, either in the washing machine or with hot water and detergent on the stovetop. Kove, who lives in Venice, hopes some of the elderly can go out to catch a brief sea breeze now that they have masks.

Argonaut editor Christina Campodonico contributed to this report.

From pint-sized dancers to skilled seamstresses to masters of 3D printing, Westsiders have contributed their time and expertise to making face masks for health care workers, volunteers and other essential first responders on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic