Coomera Anglican College is helping to make desperately needed equipment for our medical front line staff during the COVID-19 crisis.

The biofabrication unit at Brisbane’s Metro North Hospital and Health Service put out the challenge to aid in printing 3000 face shield headbands in three weeks, to be used by medical workers all throughout Queensland. The College’s extensive 3D printer capabilities, meant that they were able to jump on board and assist with the production of some much needed medical equipment for Doctors and Nurses.

Beth Claydon, Technologies and Innovation Specialist at Coomera Anglican College identified that the whole process was fairly straight forward.  “The file is downloaded from the internet and sent to our 3D printers and when the print is finished we collect it with gloves and place it in a plastic bag, as aseptically as possible” said Mrs Claydon.
 
“This is then ready to be posted off to the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. There are all sorts of people and companies that are taking this opportunity to help in this health crisis, it is so great to see everyone working together” said Mrs Claydon.

The 3D printers are located throughout Coomera Anglican College and in the Primary innovative learning hub; The Pod, Already an integral part of the curriculum at the College meant that they were able to utilise all of their resources and its technology to assist with printing as many face shield headbands as possible.
 
Mrs Claydon said “Each printer is printing at least 2 every hour which is a total of approximately 175 per day.  “We will continue over the Easter break if needed”. “The design was disseminated by Metro North and the file was created by University of Melbourne MSD Robotics Unit”.
 
Dr Mark Sly, Principal at Coomera Anglican College said “It is wonderful for our younger students at the College to know that what they learn about each day in their technology lessons, is something that is actually going towards solving a problem and keeping Health workers safe”.