“Undoubtedly he has saved lives”

A local teacher has “undoubtedly saved lives” after turning his home into a production line for vital Personal Protection Equipment (PPE).

Following our story last week about Llanfyllin High School joining the local fight against Covid-19 by 3D printing visor components, a similar operation has been revealed at Llanfair Caereinion’s high school.

Teacher Aled Williams was spurred into action after talking to relatives on the frontline who said there was a real shortage in Welsh hospitals for PPE. He followed up a post on Facebook that a Scottish teacher was printing Covid-19 visors and immediately clicked into action.

“I decided to get the 3D printer and the photocopying film from school to start making them at home,” he told us. “It just made sense after seeing and hearing about the shortages to chip in. I had a fair amount of PLA and Polypropylene at the school that would not get used this year and thought it be best put to good use.

“The real heroes are those on the front line for the NHS. I’m lucky to be able to work from home unlike many and thought I’d use my time and help those close to me working in the sector to begin with.”

Students have also played their part with the printer previously bought with money raised in 2016 by sixth form Design Technology students from sales of items made to sell at Christmas Fairs.

“I managed to download a gcode file for a design to 3D print from an open source website, the first design took two hours to print one frame for the visor,” Aled explained.

“I managed to find a second design that brought the printing time down to an hour but still found printing enough to supply the demand very difficult. So I decided to design my own and managed to get the print time down to 43 minutes. Even still, it was hard to supply the demand with more and more orders coming through.

“Luckily, Kitronik, a company supplying electronic kits to schools, emailed a link to files for a design for visors that they were producing using laser cut polypropylene. This design enables 10 to be cut in an hour. So production has been divided between 3D printing and Laser cutting this past week which has seen the laser cut visor frames boosting production.

“A lot of people are helping and have helped out behind the scenes, the students who helped get the printer back in 2016 and their hard work - Henri Huws, Eifion Jones and Llyr Mills especially. The office staff passing on orders and dealing with requests for the visors.

“Mrs. Vicky Faulkner who collected all the safety goggles and latex gloves which were shared out between Llanfair Caereinion Surgery, Newtown Hospital and a few were also sent down to Ysbyty Glangwili for a former pupil working there.”

Aled also praised headmaster Mr Philip Jones and his team at the school who “without hesitation made the school recourses available” adding that his boss’s words were “go and get whatever you need”.

Understandably Aled has come in for praise from his proud headmaster.

“Aled has been extremely generous and ingenious with his time. Undoubtedly he has saved lives,” said Mr Jones.

“He has worked tirelessly for the past month, supporting frontline staff and also redesigning the original design of the mask to reduce production time. Aled has also attended Hwbs which were set up for the children of key workers. He is our local hero.”