To help fill the critical need for personal protective equipment for health care workers on the frontline of COVID-19, UCLA engineers are working with others around the campus to manufacture surgical face shields at the UCLA Innovation Lab in the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering.
Under normal circumstances, the lab, called the UCLA Samueli Makerspace, would be teeming with students using its 3-D printers, laser cutters and other tools on class projects as well as on ideas of their own creation.
In the face of this pandemic, bioengineering professor Jacob Schmidt is working with Douglas Daniels, director of the Lux Labs at the UCLA Library, to manufacture face shields. The head frames of the face shields are 3-D-printed, and the shields are laser-cut from sheets of clear plastic.