1030: Nissan Sunderland scales up PPE production
Nissan supply chain experts are lending a hand to get hundreds of thousands of protective face visors to frontline workers.
A team of volunteers have created a parts processing line in the final assembly area at the company’s Sunderland Plant to sort thousands of individual visor parts and pack them in sets of 125 for shipping direct to the UK’s National Health Service.
The project was inspired by four brothers, two of whom, Anthony and Chris Grilli, are engineers based at Nissan’s Technical Centre in Cranfield, Bedfordshire. Production was initially kicked off with the support of crowd funding and used banks of 3D printers at the Grillis’ homes.
Anthony Grilli said: “We had the ability to support the national effort to produce more PPE for frontline health workers and we just had to help. We quickly mobilised to produce parts using our 3D printing capability at home and we’re grateful to everyone that donated through our crowd funding site to help us get this going.”
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0945: Axiom responds to NHS call for face shields
Tamworth based, Axiom GB, has responded to the NHS appeal to UK manufacturers for increased production of vital personal protective equipment (PPE) to help combat the coronavirus crisis. Axiom, a materials handling specialist, has dedicated two of its 3D printers to printing plastic parts for face shields. Production of the parts, which are given freely to the NHS, continues in the Axiom facility 24 hours a day.
“Being in a position to make use of our advanced technology to assist with the country’s effort to protect our NHS is both an honour and a privilege.”
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0900: Protolabs supports Mercedes AMG & UCL CPAP project
Three new tools that will produce tens of thousands of critical parts for a new breathing aid designed to support Covid-19 patients are being manufactured in Telford. Protolabs has created a dedicated 20-strong team to work with existing customer Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains to develop injection mould tooling in just three days.
The company, which employs 450 people at its Telford headquarters, is helping the F1 team and partner University College London ramp up production of its CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) system that delivers oxygen into the lungs without the need for an invasive ventilator.
Initial sample parts, made in nylon 30% glass fibre and Acetal co-polymer respectively, will be sent out for inspection shortly and, if successful, the company will push the button on run rates of 1100 parts per day until 10,000 of each component are manufactured.
The final devices and equipment will then be sent to 250 hospitals across the UK to help frontline staff provide the best possible care for Covid-19 patients.
Baninder Kaur, Strategic Account Manager at Protolabs and a key member of the team working with Mercedes-AMG HPP, commented: “Speed is of the essence for this project, as we need to get the CPAP systems to UCL as soon as possible.
“Within a few hours of the call, we had mobilised a dedicated design and manufacturing team to review the bracket’s design for manufacturability. This led to four quick iterations and the decision to make the bracket using two tools, allowing us to reduce lead times by running production simultaneously.”
