Kevin Patel is used to working with metals and poles and a slew of other tools for his company Star Poles. Now he finds himself using his talents in a different arena: Making face shields to help with the Covid-19 crisis.
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to infiltrate practically every industry and facet of human life, stories of human cooperation and triumph have bubbled to the surface in a common stand against this invisible enemy.
Kevin Patel is one such example. Patel is the owner of Star Poles, a company that makes fully customizable poles out of various metals.
However, because of countless business closures and in the interest of containing the contagion’s spread, Patel has switched gears and is now focused on producing personal protection equipment (PPE) for medical professionals waging the battle firsthand against COVID-19.
“People were 3D printing (face shields) at 50 minutes each, we got that down to two minutes last week using lasers and this week I got it down to 3 seconds using presses,” says Patel, who is based in the Dallas area. “In the next couple days, we’re hoping to be at 6,000 face shields a day. Yesterday alone we got 15,000 orders from hospitals.”
Patel conducts some of his work out of the ACME Creation Lab in Dallas — a “community creation space for artists, inventors, innovators,” according to the lab’s website — along with a bevy of people in the Dallas area.
“This is what I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks instead of sitting at home, trying to help any way I can. I just try to make my community or places more fun, better and light up the world while I’m at it.” – Kevin Patel
“We’re bringing the community together and bringing in the whole team to knock out as much as we can,” says Patel. “We’ve got about one million N95 masks we’re trying to get funding for to get them over here, 50,000 gallons of ethanol, trying to figure out how to buy it and turn it into hand sanitizer. One of my buddies is working on the ventilators. Just hitting this anyway I can, at least for the next few weeks.”
So far, Patel has seen his work end in the hands of not just the medical field, which receives polycarbonate shields, but also first responders who receive donated plastics that don’t hold up to the sterilization processes other polycarbonate does.
Patel has even uploaded an open-source design for five-second die-cut face shields under the label “Team Fitch,” his old wakeboarding team’s name, where he found a love for metallurgy.
“This is what I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks instead of sitting at home, trying to help any way I can,” says Patel. “I just try to make my community or places more fun, better and light up the world while I’m at it.”
For more information about Star Poles, visit starpoles.com, or be sure to visit them at their 2020 ED Expo Tradeshow booth #89. For more information about ACME Creation Lab, including how to donate, visit acmecreationlab.org. For more information on open-source designs for face shields, visit teamfitch.com.
