Sanitization and Packing Guidelines for Ear Savers

[Techniack]

Howdy,

My name is Jerry and I am the founder of Hack The Pandemic (No affiliation with Copper 3D), a driven group of Makers, Designers, and Volunteers that work with healthcare providers to develop PPE to combat the COVID-19 Pandemic. We have been producing PPE for the Tri State Area health systems for the past 3 weeks now and have just surpassed 500 shields delivered. In our time both developing and producing PPE, we have researched in detail proper sanitization procedures for how you should be handling any product you create with the intention of sending it to healthcare facilities. These advisories have been reviewed and approved by over 15 clinics and medical professionals and represent the best way an individual can prepare a donation without sending it to a group like us for sanitization and packing.

1. Act as if you were infected
   Whenever you are making something or removing prints from your print bed, be sure to wear a mask and gloves. Sanitize your work space and clean your before you start and be sure to store your product in sealed zip-lock bags.

2. Sanitize your stock
   It is currently debated how long the virus can survive on a surface. To be safe, please let your projects sit for 3-5 days before delivery to ensure that you are not sending any contaminated items.

3. Separate any Product you produce
   Do not store the entire stock in one place to minimize the risk of cross contamination. Use zip-lock bags to wrap your product so that cross contamination does not occur.

4. Mark materials
   Make sure that you clearly mark what type of filament/acrylic the item was made from on top of the bag that you store them in. Some hospitals will self sanitize donations and we have heard from multiple intake volunteers that the items need to be labeled so they know weather to use IPA or Bleach baths when sanitizing.

We have information regarding the specifics of packing your donations for the best possible processing at hackthepandemic.org.

If you have any questions, feel free to DM me here or shoot me an email at hello@hackthepandemic.org.

[arh2]

Thanks very much for this information.

[roy]

In releasing my mask clip designs, I thought about this and decided that no clinical environment would trust the cleanliness of a non-sterile home manufacturing environment. (clarification: I mean they wouldn’t trust home sterilization, not home manufacturing, so there is no reason to spend extra time cleaning.)

For non-clinical use, however, I think your advice is very good and I’ll probably do something like what you’re suggesting when I make more (so far, I spent all my time, and a lot of material, on prototyping). I will look into adding notes to my web page.

Thanks

[rsnyder]

You are wrong there. Myself and my friend have made 600 clear PPE shields made of abs and petg at my home and his shop. We just broke into material for almost 1200 more today. We are donating directly to major hospitals in TN, MS, and AR. Specifically to Covid units, icu, er staff, repiritory teams, and testing centers. We have also donated directly to surgical centers, ems, police, fire, and urgent car clinics. We’ve had nothing but rave reviews and many thanks. We have an allocation list of area hospitals who are contacting us daily for more.

Im actually completely opposite than the original poster. We do not spend tons of time sanitizing. We went over many things with the doctors we worked with and one of the main things was for us to not waste production time to overly clean them. These hospitals and clinics all have SOPs for sterilization as well as receiving outside equipment. Any incoming should be treated as if it were infected until it has been sterilized. Proper handling and them sterilizing properly negates the need for us to overly sterilize. We do wear mask whenever we handle material and then a wipe down with 91% alcohol before bagging.

We are part of a large group of other car audio guys nation wide. To date our nationwide group has done around 50k shields.

[roy]

@rsnyder Sounds like we’re agreeing, not disagreeing. I added a clarification. Is it sufficient?

Kudos for what you’re doing!

[heatherhanshew73]

Thanks so much for this information. I would like to add a special note to each of the ear savers that I send out to thank each of the front liners for what they are doing but also to give them tips on how to heat them to make them more comfortable. Is there any information or a download that we can print off and send with them?
Thanks in advance!