Sensor City Engineers made thousands of PPE visor headbands for the local community during lockdown.
While our innovation hub’s usual business activities may have slowed down during lockdown, the innovation and engineering outputs continued.
Our rapid prototyping capabilities came into their own when a shortage of personal protective equipment led to a nationwide call for additional support. With valuable machinery and engineering resources at our disposal, our lab team undertook some significant pro bono work to support the PPE production effort for the NHS.
We used an NHS approved design for face visor headbands, which we then output using our Trotec laser cutter. With 20 parts fitting on one polypropylene sheet, a complete visor headband was produced every 90 seconds.
Colin Sinclair, Director at Sensor City, said: “The Sensor City laboratories offer a unique multi-disciplinary prototyping facility for business and the health sector.
“When the team were made aware of the urgent need for PPE for local hospitals, they didn’t hesitate to give their time to help.
“With the comprehensive electrical and mechanical design facilities on site, paired with a fully-equipped manufacturing suite, ideas can be rapidly taken from concept to reality at Sensor City using bespoke, hybrid-engineering solutions.”
In total, over 3,000 visors parts were manufactured in our rapid prototyping labs which were then assembled, sterilised and distributed by DoES Liverpool to hospitals and GP surgeries across the North West, including Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen Hospital, Aintree University Hospital, The Walton Centre and Manchester Royal Infirmary.
We are proud to have supported our local NHS and care providers with valuable protection at the height of the Covid-19 crisis and will continue to champion the use of technology for the development of future healthcare innovations.
Adrian McEwen, Co-founder at DoES Liverpool, added: “It was great that Sensor City could join the community’s response to the pandemic.
“Adding their laser-cutter to those in our makerspace, at Little Sandbox, Plastic Tactics, Scan and Make, and Design Laser Play, meant we could produce over 24,000 visors for health professionals and key workers at a critical time.”
Find out more about other prototyping projects we have been involved with here
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Back in February this year, our Smart Health North event brought together regional MedTech experts to shine a light on the sector and demonstrate how innovation is driving technology advancement and better healthcare provision and outcomes. Little did we know just how important these discussions would be and how quickly reliance on new scientific research, medical sector innovation and digital production would be required.