The problem: “DrDon” (his alias) had only one Powered Air Purifying Respirator (PAPR) unit for the 4 ER doctors that rotate between hospitals in a particular Las Vegas, Nevada area community.

The forecast was for a growing number of Covid-19 patients requiring attention. He managed to ‘scrounge’ enough materials on eBay and other sources to build 3 more respirator units – with the exception of the battery charger units needed to power each respirator.

To complicate matters, his best delivery for additional battery chargers was December 2020!

“DrDon’s” idea was to make multiple battery chargers from his one, six position battery charger but he didn’t know how to proceed.

He posted this problem to a national, public, engineering forum and appealed for help.

Mike PUCKETT from DS-SOLIDWORKS, who lives in Las Vegas, answered the post and immediately contacted “DrDon” and began working on the problem.

The ‘electrical problem’ quickly became a complete engineering problem involving the need to section the fully-populated PCB from the one charger, develop and manufacture individual enclosures, source necessary electrical parts, and wire and build individual units for each of the doctors.

Using SOLIDWORKS software and 3D printers from Ultimaker and Sindoh, Mike was able to design and fabricate new enclosures for 6 units (including 2 spares). He obtained input from several SOLIDWORKS customers in the Las Vegas community to refine the designs.

Mike lead the overall project and did all the 3D modelling, 3D printing, electrical and assembly work and was able to build the necessary charging units and delivery them to “DrDon” in about 4 days.

THANK YOU Mike Puckett from your DS colleagues!

Additional outcome:
One of the additional chargers accompanied a separate Las Vegas ER doctor who travelled to New York City to help relieve over-worked medical professionals on scene there.

For a more detail account of the project, please refer to the summary from one of the people involved in this project with Mike.