Covid-19 & Byrne Tool + Design
In Michigan, the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic started on March 10 and the uncertainty of things to come began. Within two weeks, Michigan had a shelter in place order; schools were closed, restaurants only providing takeout orders, businesses were shut down or being ran on minimal staff, and store shelves were empty. The realization that our country was short of supplies for health care workers and first responders became very clear. It was the time for all of us to band together to see how we could help, and the results were astonishing. Collaboration between manufacturers with complete ventilation plans, people releasing open source designs for PPE, enhancements to surgical masks, the AM community producing PPE, and people making their own masks for donations. The world truly came together to combat this shortage and here at Byrne Tool + Design we knew we had to help; this is our culture.
By March 19, Byrne Tool + Design started brainstorming different ways we could help. We looked at ventilator components, ventilator splitters, safety glasses, swabs, face shields, face masks, and much more. We also researched which items could quickly be implemented into the market and narrowed down our selection to face shields. We have all read the articles of companies printing hundreds of face shields each day, so we looked into a variety of designs and started to tweak them until it was what we saw as most viable. Picking the correct design became a challenge because they did not nest well in a build platform. As we printed the face shields for testing, we calculated how many we could print out each day between our three printers. We were not impressed by our numbers, and knew we had to do better. We challenged ourselves to build a new 2-cavity mold in five days. As of April 27, Byrne has donated or sold over 8,000 face shields to hospitals, Firefighters, Police officers, and veterinarians.
After this, Byrne Tool + Design wanted to keep going to help combat the fight against COVID-19. We partnered with a company to produce a 2-cavity tool that produced face mask straps in 3 days. We then went on to build a 1+1 mold with a two-week lead time for ventilator components which we were able to complete in 11 days. Finally, we built a 2-cavity mold for ventilator parts with one slide per cavity and a 4-week lead time. During the design phase, there was a major change in how the customer wanted the mold to be laid out, but we were able to change the design within one day and delivered the mold 3 days ahead of schedule.
Every day we hear conflicting information on how Michigan is fairing with Covid-19, either we are at a plateau and things are about to reopen or there could be another wave of illnesses early this summer. The future for Michigan and Covid-19 is still unclear. What is clear, is that when we all bond together and use the tools we have, we make things happen in our own little way. All of these little ways add up to make a true, meaningful impact on our nation.
