(Le Mars) — It was announced during the latest Le Mars Community Board of Education meeting that members of the school district’s faculty and staff are utilizing the school’s 3-D printers to create head gear used for face shields as part of the Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE’s used by health care
professionals. Tracy Wingert is the school district’s technology
instructional coach, and along with Industrial Arts instructor, Bill Dalton, together they have made the plastic face shield head bands. Wingert tells how the idea came about.
Wingert talks about the process to create a face shield component.
The Le Mars Community School official describes the finished product.
Wingert says he and Dalton have already made ten of the head gear components. Once the head gear component is made, Wingert says the Area Education Agency then picks
them up as part of their daily scheduled run with school districts.
Wingert says normally the 3-D printers at the school are used for future engineering students, prospective architects, industrial arts, and even his robotic club members frequently use the three-dimensional printer to create parts. The school has two 3-D printers, and the technology instructor says they do come in handy.
Under normal situations, when you think of a printer, you think of ink and paper. But Wingert says the 3-D printer uses plastic as a continuous string on a spool that is being fed into the printer to make its creations.
Wingert says the school officials will continue to make the face shield hear gear components as long as there is a need by the medical community.
