AAU Steps Up

As an alumni of the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, I was thrilled to hear about what one department at the school is doing to help out during this global pandemic.
With its entire San Francisco campus closed down for the rest of the spring semester, AAU students have all gone home or back in their dorms to continue the remainder of the Spring semester online. This means, though, that studio and lab equipment are going to be under lock and key while the students are away from campus. Instead of letting the equipment sit idle and gather dust, AAU has decided to put them to work for a higher purpose—help protect the hospital front-liners with face shields made with 3D printers. Additionally, they have reached out to the 10,000 AAU School of Industrial Design students (many of them who have 3D printers at home) to also participate.
To do their part, students with 3D printers have been asked to start producing individual components. They will print them, send them to the AAU studio where they will be sanitized, assembled, and distributed to the first responders in the community.
AAU School of Industrial Design Director Max Niehaus took the lead in researching and creating a prototype of the face shield.  Given the urgency of the situation, he created a design that was the fastest to produce. To make sure that the specifications are up to standards, he sent the prototype to doctors, nurses, and technicians at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco for their assessment.
Now it’s up to the AAU students to heed the call to action and do their part to help first responders and help save lives.

Posted by: TAWD on May 5, 2020