KAJANG: Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) Unovate Centre Start-up incubatee, Kon10Innovation, is helping Covid-19 frontliners by creating 3D-printed face shields for their additional protection.
These 3D-printed face shields are the work of four innovative UTAR Engineering students who initiated a small start-up and contributed their time and creativity to support healthcare frontliners.
“We thought maybe we can contribute to help the community by providing simpler designs with shorter printing time and more adaptations to accommodate the sponge feature on the face shield after watching a Facebook post from the Malaysian community group who started the 3D-printed face shield,” said Kon10Innovation team members.
Kon10Innovation is a registered enterprise with Lim Kai Wen as its leader and founder. The other team members consist of Lee Kong Chian, Faculty of Engineering and Science students Lim Tyng Xian, Sin Chia Ling and Ooi Hsin Yein.
The team has also been receiving feedback from multiple users and health practitioners, Lim said.
“The challenge was to make simple designs while reducing the production time. Aside from that, there were alterations made to meet users’ feedback and to accommodate the aspect of comfort and safety.
“In a day, we can produce approximately 150 pieces of 3D-printed face shield. It takes 22 minutes to print and less than 30 seconds to assemble the face shield. Currently, the face shields are distributed to health clinics, Kuala Kubu Baru Hospital, Manipal Hospital Klang and others.”
Beside creating 3D-printed face shields, Kon10Innovation went a step further by creating a nebuliser spacer.
The team members realised that hospitals were using bottles with cut-ends as a temporary alternative due to the shortage of equipment, hence they created a nebuliser spacer using three 3D-printed parts which include a 0.2mm 3D-printed film and a bottle.
“Through some studies, we found out that most Covid-19 patients are affected by lung inflammation. An anti-inflammatory drug called salbutamol is used to reduce the inflammations in the lungs; a small amount is sprayed for the patients to inhale. During this process, the drug often gets trapped in the patient’s throat and bronchus, therefore only a minimal amount of drug reaches the lungs.
"Therefore, a nebuliser spacer is used to contain and space out the drug with a proper mixture of air to allow patients to intake the air-mixed drug properly. Additionally, a valve is used to ensure that the drug travels one way to avoid backflow when the patient coughs,” said Lim.
He added that there were industries now that had volunteered to sponsor in terms of fabrication of moulds to accommodate plastic injection by using polycarbonate.
“With this access, they would be able to produce roughly 6,000 – 8,000 units which can be distributed nationwide. Our face shield designs are also in the stage of implementing plastic injection to accommodate hundreds to thousands of production rate per day,” Lim said.
Kon10Innovation is an innovative start-up company, formed by a group of students from various fields, namely mechatronics engineering, product designing and programming.
It provides engineering solution and prototyping services to start-ups and entry-level industries.