BHR staff members make face makes and face shields
On March 21, Blue Hills Regional Technical School donated a significant quantity of personal protection equipment (PPE) and other vital supplies that were not being used while the school is not in session. Those items went to local hospitals and first responders who are on the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some Blue Hills Regional employees are taking that same spirit of generosity and desire to help even further.
Guidance Counselor Sarah Titus, Lead Electronics Instructor Manuel Cerqueira and Electronics Instructor Jill Bearse each volunteered to work from their homes on their own time in conjunction with a grassroots, Canton-based group called Team Tara to produce as many face masks and face shields as possible for medical personnel, at-risk members of the public and institutions that need them as COVID-19 continues to severely impact Massachusetts.
Titus, Cerqueira and Bearse are working diligently on this outside of the time they spend supporting Blue Hills Regional students remotely.
“Our Blue Hills Warrior spirit of giving back shines brightly during Covid-19 as our staff volunteers their time to provide desperately needed PPE,” said Blue Hills Regional Superintendent Jill Rossetti. “They are helping to properly protect essential workers. This effort will provide some peace of mind to the front-line workers and help protect, save lives and instill hope. I am so proud to work with these thoughtful, generous, talented and dedicated colleagues.”
The labor-intensive effort got underway when a nurse connected with Team Tara who lives in Titus’s neighborhood approached her to sew face masks. Titus, whose mother, a seamstress, taught her how to sew when she was a child, quickly agreed, dusting off her long-unused sewing machine and began industriously making masks as rapidly as she could.
Cerqueira and Bearse, whose initial contact with Team Tara was facilitated by Superintendent Rossetti, readily jumped onboard to produce face shields with 3D printers. Those face shields will be going to hospitals and facilities from Brockton to Boston. Bearse said, “I saw on the news that Mass. General Hospital was looking for people to make 3D pieces for ventilators. That got me thinking that maybe we could help out.”
The whole endeavor is being coordinated by Team Tara. According to the organization’s web site, www.teamtarahopes.org, “In 2013, Tara Shuman, in treatment for HER2+ breast cancer, walked in her first Jimmy Fund Walk with her five-year-old son. The 2013 Walk inspired Tara so much that she decided to team up with her dear friend, Amy Killeen, and create a Jimmy Fund Walk team. Amy and Tara have thoroughly enjoyed co-captaining Team Tara since 2014. They and their mighty team are relentless in the fight against cancer.”
They are equally relentless in their battle against COVID-19. Killeen said, “We are currently making supplies for hospital staff, homeless shelters, assisted living / dementia unit staff, physical therapists, corrections officers, transportation / truck drivers, home health aides, hospice nurses and centers, and more.”
Titus is one of many people working on the face mask part of this project for Team Tara. She said others are donating and cutting fabric, contributing buttons and elastic, and sewing like she is. Blue Hills Regional School Nurse Joan Gainey, along with teachers Janice LaVoie and Trish Murphy, are also pitching in and sewing up a storm.
Auto Collision and Repair Lead Teacher Dwight Seaman and his wife gave shop towels to use for the face masks instead of fabric. Titus said, “The blue shop towels that Dwight and Tina donated with their own money filter two to three times more particles than fabric, greatly improving the effectiveness of fabric masks. People can insert a disposable single-use shop towel into a reusable fabric mask and get the extra protection.”
As of April 8, Titus estimates she has produced over 100 face masks. She said she can usually complete five or six an hour.
She has no definite goal in mind for the final number of face masks she plans to sew. “As long as I have supplies, I’ll just keep sewing until they say to stop. Doing the little bit I can is keeping me busy instead of feeling helpless.”
As for the face shields being made by Cerqueira and Bearse, each is comprised of a bracket that is made on the 3D printer and fits around the wearer’s head, plus elastic and an office-supply clear sheet (inserted horizontally, in landscape orientation). “Team Tara might affix foam tape to the forehead area for comfort during long-time wear,” added Cerqueira.
"Jill has made close to 30 [after just a few days]. Now that my machine is up and running, I’m closing in with 18. We plan on producing 12-20 per day, plus production from several others involved [there are, by Cerqueira’s count, nearly ten 3D-printer participants joining forces for this in Canton, Norwood, Dedham, Thayer Academy in Braintree and in other towns].
The production of even one face shield is painstaking. Each takes about an hour and a half on the machine to complete, and there can be occasional glitches in the manufacturing process that have to be smoothed out before proceeding.
Just getting everything off the ground successfully presented a challenge. As Cerqueira explained, “We had to research pros and cons of available designs and test them out on the printer for quality control. We made some design changes and later found an existing design ‘that checks all the boxes.’ We chose a style that required fewer steps and much less finishing time to get it to the user faster.”
“Early on, print quality vs. speed/time adjustments were made in each file-version run,” he noted. “Also, adhesion to the machine's ‘bed’ surface can be a challenge. After each run we would test/vet the quality of the print. Print quality vs. speed/time are always trade-offs when 3D printing, so the selected design was chosen in part because it was more forgiving at high speed.”
Cerqueira continued, “We probably reviewed a dozen or so designs. We modified one and added features to allow for standard elastics instead of straps. More designs are shared each day and after we vetted them, the group selected a similar elastic band with a slot style to replace the previous three-hole punched variety that was significantly more labor/time intensive.”
Commercially-available face shields can be heavy-duty for reuse or lightweight single-use. The ones Bearse and Cerqueira are making are in between, he pointed out, and can be disinfected with hydrogen peroxide mist and reused.
“The group we are in has gotten some donations to help with the cost of making these,” said Bearse. “I purchased some transparency material for them on eBay. I'm not concerned about being reimbursed - I just figured that I should buy it before it’s unavailable.”
It’s a pretty sure guess that everyone who’s involved in this humanitarian initiative would affirm Manny Cerqueira’s words – “It feels good to be able to do something to help.”
“I'm grateful that I work at a school that is so open to help the community by letting us use our equipment to contribute to this great cause,” Bearse said. “Our administration is ‘top-notch!’”
“Our favorite thing about the work we do is the team aspect of it,” emphasized Amy Killeen of Team Tara. “Meeting such generous, hardworking people as Manny, Jill, and Sarah and collaborating on this important project with them has been incredible. We're not just a Jimmy Fund Walk team, we're a community and coming together at this difficult time has been a gift.”