Designed by: Milind Chitale, Director Makerspace, Associate Professor at AnantU
To fight the COVID 19 crisis, it is imperative that the frontline warriors like police personnel, municipality workers and health workers, are well-protected while doing their duty. There have been several disturbing reports of miscreants trying to attack the public servants by throwing things, spitting, and coughing directly at them in the line of duty. This directly exposes them to possibly contaminated body fluids, and hence is a very serious threat to their health and safety.
In order to protect the frontline workers in such situations, the Makerspace team at Anant National University, designed and manufactured visors that can be worn above the disposable mask, to protect the entire face of the frontline workers.
The team started work on this on Thursday, 9th April 2020, and completed the trials to get first prototype ready in just a day. The design was made using clear Polycarbonate sheet, which is an unbreakable material when inflicted with ordinary fall and impacts, thus providing assured longer service life to the user. The cost of the visor is around Rs. 80 per unit. A user can clearly observe all things around him while being protected from any airborne liquid contamination that he or she may face while working in the field.
Some of the salient features of the visor are:
1) Made of clear unbreakable Polycarbonate
2) Easy to assemble on field
3) Easy to transport
4) Laser Cut components for scalability
5) Optimised to consume least amount of material
6) Single material enables quick and efficient sourcing
7) Size adjustability allows wide usage
The Makerspace team along with the support of the AnantU leadership, was able to identify a few departments where they required the visors on a priority basis. With the limited supply of raw material, the Makerspace team manufactured close to 300 visors which were distributed amongst local hospitals and the traffic police force of Ahmedabad, free of cost.
Caption: Extreme left holding the Visor: Mr Vijay Patel SPS (Gujarat), Dy. Commissioner of Police, Control Room, Ahmedabad City
Handing Over: Mr. Milind Chitale, Director, Maker Space (our Lab & Studio)
Behind in Brown Suit: Dr Anunaya Chaubay, Provost, Anant National University
Extreme Right: Durgesh Agarwal, Board Member, Anant National University
Caption:
In the photo from left to right
1) Milind Chitale, Director of Makerspace and Associate Professor at Anant National University
2) Dr Kirti Goswami, Resident Medical Officer GMERS Medical College Hospital Sola, Ahmedabad
Coverage from the day the team distributed the visors to Police Commissioner’s Office, Ahmedabad and Sola Civil hospital can be found in the ‘In The News’ section. This initiative has been acknowledged by various publications.