An engineer from Trinity College Dublin (TCD) has relocated a number of the college's 3D printers to his home, where he is producing personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline medical staff.

As access to TCD is restricted during the COVID-19 pandemic, the chief technical officer in the college's School of Engineering, Mick Reilly, has relocated six of the school's 3D printers to his home in Kildare.

There, in response to the national shortage of PPE, he is working with the PPE-Hub platform founded by BenchSpace to manufacture face shields.

Helped by his sons Ollie (13) and George (10), Mr Reilly has produced over 1,000 face shield frames to date for the PPE-Hub, along with 300 full face shields. These have all been donated to frontline medical staff in hospitals, nursing homes and GP practices in Dublin and Kildare.

"Having recently set up a very successful 3D printing facility in the Department of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering for our undergraduate students, it would have been a shame not to utilise our resources for this initiative," he commented.

The face shield frames are printed in line with PPE-Hub protocols, and are 100% recyclable and safe for skin contact.

The completed frames are collected by regional volunteers from Blood Bikes Ireland and delivered to a central assembly site at the Garyduff Sports Centre in Cork, where members of the Defence Forces are sanitising, assembling and packing the completed PPE face shields.

The manufacture of the face shields will continue as long as there is a demand for them. Furthermore, there are plans to add more of TCD's 3D printers to the production line to help meet anticipated future requirements.

*Pictured is chief technical officer in TCD's School of Engineering, Mick Reilly, with his sons Ollie and George.