Friends Indeed: UTC grad making face shields with 3D printers for coronavirus fight

Sixty-two printers sit on tables arranged in an enormous rectangle. The wide-open space is filled with the zzzhh-zzzhh-zzhhh of the machines at work.

These aren't your average printers, though, and what they're producing is far from average. They're 3D printers churning out parts for the transparent face shields used by health-care workers treating patients during the coronavirus crisis.

Every day for the past few weeks, UTC graduate Chantz Yanagida has spent eight hours with the printers, in charge of maintaining and repairing them. Located in the Hamilton County Schools' STEM School on the Chattanooga State Community College campus, production of the 3D-printed pieces is a collaboration between the STEM School, Public Education Foundation, Hamilton County Schools and eLab Repairs, the company Yanagida created soon after graduating from UTC in 2019 with a degree in mechanical engineering.

Contributed Photo by Angela Lewis Foster / UTC graduate Chantz Yanagida checks a 3D printer he's using to make transparent face shields at Hamilton County's STEM School at Chattanooga State Community College.

Right now, days are long, he said. He usually gets to the STEM School about 10 a.m., works a full day, goes home, eats dinner, then starts another eight hours of work designing 3D prototypes for the N95 respirators that, like face shields and surgical masks, are in desperately short supply across the nation.

"My workday is usually from 10 a.m. 'til 3 a.m.," Yanagida said, smiling with grim humor because he's not kidding. "I'm having a lot of fun, but, yeah, I'm tired."

Michael Stone, director of innovative learning at the Public Education Foundation, is effusive in his praise of Yanagida and his work.

"Chantz is great," Stone said. "He is an expert in his field and has played a critical role serving as the chief technician to keep the 3D printers on the farm up and running. He approaches his work with professionalism and a high level of expertise."

Contributed Photo by Angela Lewis Foster / UTC graduate Chantz Yanagida has 62 3D printers at work to create transparent face shields for health-care workers. His workspace is set up at Hamilton County's STEM School at Chattanooga State Community College.

Gathered from schools all over Hamilton County, the machines are operating from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. daily, making the plastic piece that attaches the transparent face shield to the elastic headband. On one STEM School table, four aluminum trays - the kind that hold the stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner - are stacked about 8 inches high with the parts.

It takes about two and a half hours to make one piece, or about 200 per day. About 1,000 have been made since April 1 and the goal is to print between 3,000 and 5,000, Stone said.

While the team has worked closely with Erlanger, "we are delivering to a broad range of organizations, including private practices, other hospitals, security agencies and hospice," he said.

Contributed Photo by Angela Lewis Foster / UTC graduate Chantz Yanagida is in charge of maintaining and repairing the 62 3D printers being used to make transparent face shields for health-care workers. The printers run several hours a day at Hamilton County's STEM School at Chattanooga State Community College.

Getting the materials needed to make them is key, and that's been tough at times, Yanagida said. If his prototype for a respirator mask works, he hopes to bring it to the UTC College of Engineering and Computer Science, where it can be produced more quickly with the college's vacuum manufacturing machines, which can finish a mask in about 10 minutes.

Despite the combined 16-hour days at the STEM School and at home, he knows the work is critical to Chattanooga and the rest of the country.

"I am DIY (do it yourself) from the core of my being, but it's important that we don't forget why we're doing this," he said. "We need to work with respect and extreme caution because we are developing these for those medical people who are on the front lines."