photo courtesy university of memphis
Dr. Ebraham Asadi at the University of Memphis
Who do you picture when you picture a hero? Perhaps a firefighter, rushing into a burning building, enters your mind. I experienced just this sort of heroism firsthand, last fall, when my husband’s and my Midtown home lit up from an electrical fire. The quickness of the Memphis Fire Department crew that evening stunned me, but what stays with me even more vividly is their compassion. One man, whose name I do not know, handed us a bottle of water so that our dogs could drink from our cupped hands. Those firefighters understood precisely what to do in order to keep us, and as much of our home as possible, safe.
Living in these pandemic days can feel a little like being in a fire that just won’t be snuffed. The best most of us can do is avoid it — we can deprive it of oxygen by preventing its insatiable desire to spread, but that’s about all. There is a certain quiet, collective heroism in everything we are not doing. There’s heroism in staying home, in keeping our distance, in wearing masks when we do need to draw near others.
But then there are those who are taking active steps each day to make the rest of us safer, and to sustain us during these difficult days. We decided to talk to several locals whose heroism takes different, but undeniable forms, for which they are uniquely qualified. Without question, we could have filled every page of this magazine with other local heroes’ stories.
— Anna Traverse Fogle, CEO & Editor-in-Chief
photo courtesy university of memphis
Face mask frames manufactured at the University of Memphis using 3-D printing technology.
For the past few weeks, a lab at the University of Memphis has been using 3-D printing to make protective gear for local medical personnel 24 hours a day.
Dr. Ebrahim Asadi, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the U of M, heads the university’s Metal Additive Manufacturing Laboratory, where the gear is being fabricated.
The lab, which opened in 2018, primarily focuses on metal 3-D printing, manufacturing items such as medical implants. But Asadi says when he began hearing about the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE), the lab began printing face shield frames in mid-March.
“You see all these people getting sick,” Asadi says. “The first thing you notice is with this volume of people getting sick, hospitals and healthcare providers on the front line are going to get exhausted. So immediately, I thought, what can I do? What is my part in this?”
“When you are doing research at a university, you always want to see the tangible results right away,” Asadi says. “Knowing that we can help the front-line fighters is a real result.”
Using five commercial-grade 3-D printers, the lab has printed about 350 frames to date. The frames are a key component of face shields that protect healthcare workers on the front lines combatting COVID-19. Each frame can be sanitized and reused up to 20 times.
The other components include a clear plastic shield, which is the protective piece, and the elastic strap that holds it in place.
The lab delivered its initial batch of shields to Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital at the end of March. Now, the lab is manufacturing frames for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, which is distributing them to local hospitals and agencies upon request.
Asadi, in his fifth year teaching at the U of M, says realizing there was something that he could do to help during this crisis is “priceless.”
“When you are doing research at a university, you always want to see the tangible results right away,” Asadi says. “Knowing that we can help the front-line fighters is a real result.”
3-D printing has been around in the academic world since the 1980s and in the commercial arena since the 2000s, Asadi says. But in recent years, he says, researchers have begun exploring the many applications of this printing technology.
Asadi says what the 3-D printing community has been able to do during this pandemic shows the breadth of production possibilities.
“In a situation like this, when there is a shortage of specific devices, in this case PPE, the 3-D printing community has shown it can quickly adapt to new designs and devices,” Asadi says. “I think this situation will impact how we as researchers see 3-D printing, and also how the community views 3-D printing.”
Asadi hopes the university’s efforts will create a network, so that in the next situation like this, everyone will be able to coordinate and quickly manufacture needed supplies on a larger scale. “We need to be more efficient in our response,” he says.
