A GROUP of bikers have been using the stay-at-home message to help care homes by providing some specially-made protective equipment.
The Widows Sons MBA, which is based in Wokingham, has seen its PPE production line grow from a spare room with a single 3D printer to an impressive enterprise that has created more than 1,800 face shields.
It launched in April, and is still going strong, offering PPE to care agencies and hospitals across the county.
Graham Wignall, who launched the scheme, said: “I was too old to volunteer with the military reserve so I was thinking of things to do instead.
“I had a 3D printer sitting around in my spare room, and my other half has worked in the care industry for over 30 years, and it was obvious that they were short of PPE. I thought there was something we could do to help.
“There is a national group that produces PPE called 3D Group UK and they have a production facility but when I tried to get involved my printer turned out not to be suitable.”
Despite this initial setback, they managed to devise a design that he could print – just very slowly, with 10 a day being a top figure. Mr Wignall decided to contact friends within the Widows Sons MBA in a bid to scale up production, recruiting volunteers and borrowing printers.
“I got in touch with some friends from the Widows Sons, which is an organisation for freemason bikers.
“I was overwhelmed,” a delighted Mr Wignall explained.
And they set up a small production line, with a team creating the visors, and another cutting and attaching the elastic straps. The bagged up visors then had to be placed into quarantine for 72 hours before being distributed.
“We started out with a few hundred visors and as soon as we started phoning around, we got requests for over a thousand,” Mr Wignall said.
“We approached another one of the Widow’s chapters who donated a printer for us. Suddenly it was snowballing. We got to the stage where we were running flat out and shipping over a hundred every couple of days.
“We got to the point where the biggest challenge was getting in touch with agencies that need them.”
Volunteers helped by ringing around to find out where the masks were needed.
“We’ve supplied to all sorts of places, including two or three hospitals, all the main efforts have been focused on the big targets, such as the Royal Berkshire Hospital,” he said. “It’s a bit back-to-front going at it that way round. The ones who need it are the ones who can’t get hold of it through the normal channels.
“What people don’t realise is every time a patient is discharged from hospital and needs support, there is a care agency.
“There are hundreds of them and they are almost invisible.
“It’s the unglamorous end of the market. These people have never had PPE because they haven’t had reason to. They don’t have the resources or suppliers and if there are, then they are at the back of the queue.”
Despite a national group, which has produced more than 162,000 face shields, suggesting that demand has began to drop, Mr Wignall and his team says this is not the case locally.
“We wanted to go after the small, independent local ones and that’s what we’ve been doing,” he continued.
“Were up to 1,800 (masks) so far. It’s just not slowing down. It’s become a bit of an obsession. It’s worth it when you get out there and hand the stuff over.
“We will continue for as long as people need it. 3D Group UK have about 8,000 volunteers and produced 162,000 face shields.
“They put out a message telling everyone to stand down because demand is falling. We wondered whether that was true and wanted to see what was going on in our end of the market.
“I made some phone calls to care agencies, three of which were okay and three were still in desperate need of PPE.”
