TYLER, Texas — A Grace Community School teacher and her students are making mask buckles through the use of a 3D printer for East Texas medical workers.
The idea came from Grace athletic trainer and CHRISTUS Trinity Mother Frances employee, Carson Powell, who also works at the hospital.
"During this crisis I’ve been working at the hospital and just from hearing from nurses as well as myself wearing a mask for 12 hours is not normally what we’ve done," Powell said. "So we’re all realizing how irritating these masks can be."
Powell says he brought the idea to his fellow co-worker, Jessica Huddleston, the director of purposeful design, on whether her class could make such a design.
"Each printer makes eight at a time and we have three printers so we’re able to make 24 an hour," Powell said. "We’re cycling the students in, obviously keeping up with social distancing, just having a couple of people in here at a time, just so that they can keep the process going so it’s when one batch is done we’re starting the second batch right away."
The students at the center of the projects are students from Huddleston's engineering design class.
"It’s a pretty simple design so it doesn’t take that much time to print and it’s flexible so it’s easy to use and very basic," student Josh Glenney said.
His fellow classmates who would otherwise be at home social distancing says they are just happy to give back at this time.
"Just contributing in a small way to help those that are contributing a lot, I know at least for me, probably Josh too, just being stuck at home just wanting to do something to help in some way," said student Kate Holbrook.
Meanwhile Powell says the buckles will go a long way to helping so many health workers working long hours in a single day.
"Whatever we can do to help them in their day to day maybe make their day a little bit better is all we can ask for, so if that’s what we can do we’re definitely ready to do that," Powell explained.
The students will work continue their work throughout the weekend and have the first batch ready for workers April 13.
The buckles are donated to the Christus Trinity Mother Frances hospital.