With in-house expertise and state-of-the-art tools at their fingertips, Northern College's Innovation Hub has switched gears for the COVID-19 pandemic.
A handful of core staff at the Timmins school are building personal protective equipment for the local health sector.
Amy McKillip, manager of applied research, entrepreneurship and innovation, said they are working on two face shields.
There's a durable, 3D-printed version that is reusable.
“We create the headbands; the shields for those are already in existence. We reverse engineered the 3D-printed headbands to fit the shields that are currently being used by the health sector,” she said.
They are also building a one-use face shield that is strong enough to last a 12-hour shift, then be disposed of.
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Both products are being built at the Timmins campus, with the 3D printing done on-site, and the one-time use shield being built using locally sourced materials.
With campuses in Kirkland Lake, Haileybury and Moosonee as well, McKillip said the products will be available for anyone requiring them in the catchment area.
Right now, she said, they are in the initial prototyping stage, and are getting good feedback from people.
"Of course we’re willing to make any changes to adapt to other needs, or sturdier requirements, or ease of use, so we’re always ready to adapt and innovate the next version,” she said.
How many items the hub makes will be based on the need in the community.
“Our goal is to hopefully just serve the need as required, so it would be the health sector and first responders to tell us how much they need and we haven’t received that number yet,” she said.
The Innovation Hub is a new 24,000-square-foot research facility that was slated to celebrate its grand opening in June.
McKillip explained they would normally do research and development with for-profit companies, helping find solutions to challenges and opportunities to grow or develop new products
“We’ve ceased that work mostly, of course, because of COVID, but we switched our R&D focus to building 3D printed and...one-time use face shields for the health sector,” she said.
While she said they are open to trying to develop other products, right now they are only producing the face shields.
This story originally appeared on TimminsToday.com.
