This is a status update I recently received from the VP of Maker Nexus:

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We have three programs running right now at Maker Nexus to help with the COVID crisis. We put these programs in place after talking with the Valley Medical Center Foundation. Through them we have been in touch with Kaiser hospital nurses to review our designs and finished products. Kaiser is extremely grateful for our help and has written us a letter to denote that we are a critical medical supply facility during the crisis. We have also been in contact with the Mayor of Sunnyvale and he supports our work.

Face shields: These are worn by hospital staff to help protect from splatter (my term, not theirs). There are three parts to these. Two are made on 3D printers and one is laser cut. We make the parts, assemble them, and drop them off at VMCF for distribution.
We have 6 3D printers of our own working 24 hours a day. We have borrowed 9 more from a closed middle school. We are recruiting members of the community who have 3D printers at home to make the parts and drop them off at our facility. We currently have over 200 at-home volunteers on this project.
We have 3 laser cutters to make the clear plastic shield part.

We have the capacity to make 50 a day and we are ramping up. Our goal is to be able to make 1,000 a day.

Today each shield costs about $5 and we are soliciting donations to buy the materials to keep production running.

Face masks: Hospitals give these cloth masks to each person who walks into their facility. These are not meant to protect the wearer, but to protect everyone else by limiting the spread of the virus by these people.
Kaiser has asked to get all we can produce.
We currently have people sewing these at home and dropping them off at our facility for distribution. I'm not sure how many a day we can make at this time.

Members have bought their own cloth and elastic for this project. Sources for the elastic are drying up and we have made some bulk purchases to distribute to our sewing team.

Scrubs: It's hard to believe, but the hospital says they are running out of scrubs. We sourced some patterns and have members sewing these at home. Now. This effort is just getting under way.

Other projects: Now that the hospitals know we are working, more projects keep popping up. They asked us to reverse engineer a part for a machine they have that is breaking. We are also in contact with a group that is trying to make another medical device; they are sourcing funding for that themselves so that we can manufacture the devices without having to raise money.

On top of all this, our dedicated members keep paying their monthly dues even though we do not let them into the facility. I am really touched by their continued generosity, energy, and ingenuity. However, our base monthly expenses run in the range of $40,000 (rent alone is $18,000 a month) and I worry that at some point we will run out of money; we do not have a large general bank account.
We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit. We have been serving our community for a year; we opened in April 2019.

Donations to Maker Nexus will be used to keep our COVID response running. Donations can be made through our website http://makernexus.org Large donors may want to contact us directly to avoid the 3% fee that comes with using a credit card to donate.

I would be happy to provide more information to anyone who wants it. They may contact me at

jim.schrempp@makernexus.org

Best Regards,

Jim

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Jim Schrempp

Maker Nexus Board Member

http://makernexus.org