What to do when pants are not required
Melissa Purl’s inspiring (and hilarious) story of starting @MaskMakersBoise
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Written by Melissa Purl.
This isn’t the zombie apocalypse that Hollywood prepared me for.
This is Fort Couch, and we are loaded up with snacks, drinks, and an appropriate amount of toilet paper. Americans doing what we are good at, living in a semi vegetative state for ungodly periods of time. We miss each other, and we are getting bored AF, but we have been training for this event for some time. We can do this, #alonetogether.
But what was I doing a few months ago? January was in full swing, and we started to hear some stories from China about a scary new disease. Don’t get me wrong, I feel for the people there. But I’m also a early Xenillennial that has been through basically every scary thing since the mid 80s. My anxiety meter can handle all kinds of crap. I’m not exactly ready to ring alarm bells. Maybe I’ll buy a bag of rice at Costco and dread the thought of having to live off of it. Yep. That’s the plan at this point.
February rolls around, and suddenly things are getting serious.
Like when you suddenly realize that your “not too serious” friend + benefits has been leaving more things at your place. Its here, but its not everywhere. A toothbrush, maybe a change of clothes. Tolerable and reasonable considering the circumstances.
I have a background in what you might call research. I specialize in a completely different area, but the info gathering steps are largely the same. The news at this point is…. suspicious. It feels like they have no idea what is actually going on, and they aren’t allowed to call China on their BS numbers. They know we have a few cases here, but they have no clue how bad it’s going to get. We can keep millions of people in prison, so you’d think we could keep track of a few hundred people. Nope. Cannot. They still went to the store and the bar and blah blah blah… Clearly, we all have social media. You saw it too. Don’t lie.
But what did I see? I saw people being humans. To quote Agent M from MIB, “A person is smart but people are dumb dangerous animals and you know it.” True story, unfortunately. I saw people just like me walking the path of comforting denial. Under normal circumstances that’s just dumb, but in this case it was dangerous. Our supply chain is well established. Broken in like your favorite pair of jeans, so to speak. What happens when you try and do something in those jeans that they aren’t used to? You bent over too fast and riiiip. Ruined. That’s exactly what I saw happening to our supply chain. Idiots buying all the TP and flour like they were going to cook for themselves and knew it was going to cause a digestive problemo. 💩
Whats the problem there? Chamin rolls out more TP, and we’re good to go? No, Karen. Do you know what else needs a healthy supply chain? Lifesaving medical equipment. What was happening when these dumb dangerous animals weren’t taking this thing seriously in January? Well, they weren’t ordering enough PPE (personal protective equipment). Some medical centers were, and boy, are they the lucky ones now. You don’t just rub a magic lamp and have masks pop out. Materials need ordered, delivered, assembled, distributed, paid for, received. That takes time, and time is not our friend.
Little not-too-old me sitting in beautiful Boise, Idaho. A sassy computer nerd who already works from home. What am I going to do about it? I can’t just start making phone calls and telling people what they should be doing. Lemme enlighten you with unsolicited advice — in my experience they don’t appreciate that. Not. One. Bit. But I’m fairly well educated, I have more friends than I ever thought I’d have, and I’m ridiculously crafty. Let’s see what specific things are going to rise to the top of the to-do pile.
March rolls around, and the news is that we’re fucked.
We knew it, but like, we’re always a little fucked. So we complained about washing our hands and missing out on vacations. Booo hooo, my flight was canceled. I wanted to catch a deadly disease in unfamiliar territory and bring it back. Why can’t I do that? Isn’t this America?
March 16th, I’m scrolling through the internet watching the shit steadily head towards the fan. I see this project where someone started printing masks in South America or something. *Ding* Well I can do that, right? So I send a simple text off to my dad, great guy if you’re lucky enough to know him. I said “Hey, wanna fire up the printer for me?” Little did he know, saying ‘yes’ meant 3 weeks of hard work.
We printed out the one I found online and it was a bit of a disappointment. Flimsy and too small. The filter didn’t even screw into the mask. Lame. But, it was enough to say ‘We can do this better’.
A little background for you. My wonderful father has been perfecting 3D printing and custom fabrication with printing for the last 3 years. He’s also been drawing with CAD programs since before my little sister was born. So, he knows his way around, at an expert level. I am creative and driven by things that inspire me. I probably have other good qualities too, but I’m not good at illustrating them.
Over the next week, we passed several versions back and forth. But all from a distance, me stopping by the office in the morning and picking up a new print to fight with. By this point, we thought we had a good base for a program that could possibly help effect this curve. But what to do about it?
Comrades, it was quite the week. A lot of things were happening all at the same time, and the stakes are high. We went from a state where the news on our phone was intense, but a little abstract. We know it’s real, but does anything you don’t see for yourself seem real? It’s not like our level of trust for the news is very high. I wouldn’t let CNN watch my kids, but I’ll go drinking with her.
Truth be told, I plan things pretty obsessively. This project had a clear path to success. Provide people with the thing they needed when they needed it. All I had to do was connect those dots, but first to define them.
Materials and Resources
Partnering with materials experts and chemists, we covered the most important requirements. Wearability, seal, fluid resistance, and filter potential. No biggie, just a lot of reading. Some previous heavy reading experience required.
Paying attention to Italy, their faces were bruised, chafed, and irritated by bacteria buildup. The thing about the disposable masks is, they aren’t designed for long term wear. These health heroes were wearing masks for long stressful shifts. Imagining the stress they would have been under while feeling so miserable themselves, is heartbreaking. You can call one or two images doctored, but you’d have to be willfully ignorant not to recognize that as a problem. (If you felt insulted by the previous statement, its you. You’re the reason we can’t have nice things. Like universal healthcare as a human right. That would be nice right now, huh? But, no. We have this. Good going champ. 🐦) This happened in countries where socialized medicine has been available for a long time. Imagine the potential for differences here.
The seal needs to be closely fitting to the skin. Any unfiltered air that gets in is hazardous to my germaphobe mind. The material we chose for the seal is very soft and pliable. Super easy to superglue into place so that it fits you exactly how you want it to. I’ve been doing a lot of research lately into face shapes. It turns out, we’re all a little different. 🤷♀️ The product we chose is pretty cool. On a scale of knowing a what a VSCO girl is to interviewing your idol, I’d say it’s pretty cool like when Google Translate makes sense to both parties.
Fluid resistance, mas importante. Think, how confident would you be if someone wet-coughed at your face? I mean. Gross. I have an almost two year old girl. She’s currently getting a lot of training on covering coughs. She has no real cough, but she’ll copy anything I do. So #Parenting2020.
Filter potential is pretty neat. If we can fab an attachment that will fit the hole in the mask, then we can use that as a filter body. The current model uses a left right screw dynamic. That means that when you tighten the filter cap to the right, it counter torques the seal ring. That action works like a ring seal on a canning jar next to the mask body. But to break it down, the filter works as well as what you use for it. HEPA filters, easily accessible material in vacuum bags and some furnace filters. No need to hoard it either. A small piece of filter can be used each time. One vacuum bag goes a long ways. Think about how long you leave your furnace filters in there. Do you clean them out every day? No. You breathe that air for 3 months or until you wonder why the house smells stale. You’re not diligently changing it, human. Don’t lie.
This environment is quite a bit different though. All kidding aside, it’s a prolonged sense of stress no matter where you are. Something so contagious in an overwhelmed hospital is going to have an effect on you. For this and many other reasons, it is important to provide people with PPE resources that allow for them to be safe and as close to comfortable as safety will allow.
Lastly, but most importantly, getting people together.
I am only one human, and while that annoys me, it’s the truth. We need each other, and can still collaborate while distancing.
At this point, during evening and weekend hours of the first week, I started connecting with people who were trying to accomplish similar goals in other states. As luck would have it, a friend of mine from a previous project was working with a group in the Seattle area. They had a few more members to their team, so they were also focusing on sharing their prints with the world. Its also motivation just to know you’re not the only one trying to work on it. It feels like a team effort.
Local community support was key. I’ve been bouncing back and forth asking my nursing friends ad nauseam about what their opinions are on features and functions. Also, trying to get good contacts for upper level management at healthcare facilities to make time to meet. They are understandably busy and skeptical. People don’t just offer you solutions to problems. There’s always a catch, right? Sorry, just trying to accomplish something here.
What we found was two camps of healthcare facilities. Ones that started ordering in January and are much more prepared. And those that, for a number of reasons, didn’t or couldn’t order enough. Those that did order enough are still very stringently only accepting previously NIOSH/FDA approved PPE. Approvals take a long time, it seems. The PDF to explain the NIOSH process alone was exhausting. And expensive.
Wanna talk about government red tape? Make a fast track for PPE. Let your experts try a bunch and pick the ones they like best. Have them send out a wish list. Someone will want to come to their aide. It shouldn’t be that hard.
Those that didn’t or couldn’t are our target “market,” so to speak. Knowing their headcount on the front lines, I could scale our manufacturing lab to exceed those needs. Currently, we are providing them with samples to test themselves. Those tests are going well, and I’ll make any change they want. The cool thing about having access to this type of fabrication process is that you and time are your only real limits.
Chatting with the materials supplier about what to use for which desired material qualities. We needed them safe for the skin, comfortable, a little flex, temp resistance up to 170, chemical resistance, etc. We were also good customers and let them know how much material we plan on ordering so they can get it in stock. Common courtesy, and better for both of us. Supply chain basics y’all.
Now we are into week two. Making supply orders, making molds, casting prototypes. A very tedious process. Please enjoy my time lapses of a few steps on our social media accounts (@MaskMakersBoise).
Testing is still ongoing, but showing promising results. They are comfortable, and resistant to everything we’ve put them through so far. I would feel awful sending out untested equipment, so we’ve made a point to fast track every test we can think of.
Community engagement is obviously key. Social media was the lock. I used every keyboard warrior skill to find established volunteers to distribute. Network with small businesses who want to help. Gather beta users who are willing to provide feedback on their experience. How to do that in only a few short weeks? Well, set up a Facebook event.
Sit At Home — Stare Out Window
Almost 7,000 people joined, we laughed and cried and felt a sense of community in a time where things were rapidly changing. People need people, if I have learned anything during this experience. A few of those people noticed what I was doing, and here we are today.
What we need now is expanded community support. Fortunately, we’ve put together enough initial resources that we can produce masks for healthcare workers on a priority basis while being able to offer masks to our sponsors as well. Please visit our social media pages (Facebook, Instagram), and our GoFundMe for more information. And here’s our order form.
We appreciate all of you, and we can make a difference being alone together.
