VINEMONT, Ala. – Many small manufacturers across the country, professional and amateur, began turning out components for medical face shields on 3D printers in response to shortages due to COVID-19, but 3D printing can be a slow process that does not lend itself to mass production. That is where Vinemont-based industrial injection molding shop The Robson Company comes in.
Tool and die maker Chris Robson has produced an injection molding die that can turn out shield frames rapidly, fast enough to have produced almost 14,000 frames in the last week. While a 3D printer can take up to three hours to produce a single frame, the injection molder is turning out a finished piece every 33 seconds! On top of that, the frames come out of the mold hot and sterile, and do not have to go through a separate 20-minute sanitizing process used on the printed pieces, saving even more time.
Once packaged and boxed by volunteers working in five-hour shifts, the frames are sent to a group named Huntsville Fighting COVID, where volunteers fit clear shields to the frames and ship them out to hospitals across Alabama. Shields with Robson’s frames have already gone to Birmingham, Huntsville, Auburn, Montgomery, Mobile and even Cullman Regional.
Huntsville Fighting COVID describes itself as “a bunch of nerdy engineers in Huntsville, and we are 3D printing face shields to help protect workers from airborne splatter. Even as we 3D print shields to fill the immediate need, we are rapidly moving forward to even more efficient manufacturing methods like die cutting and injection molding so that we can protect as many people as quickly as possible.”
In addition to his contribution to the Huntsville project, Robson has also been contacted by groups in Guatemala and the Czech Republic about molds for their own production facilities.
On Thursday, Robson told The Tribune that being part of the COVID-19 response “is the closest thing to church, as I stated on Facebook. Considering how we’re so separated, to bring people together by just the simple task of what we’re doing is such a wonderful, wonderful feeling, and doing something to help someone else without our own regard.”
For more information on Huntsville Fighting COVID or to request face shields, visit https://huntsvillefightingcovid.com.
For more in The Robson Company, visit www.robsonco.com. Please note that The Robson Company cannot distribute shields directly. Orders must go through Huntsville Fighting COVID.
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