Lansing Sun

East Lansing public school teachers are working together with their superintendents and tinkrLAB to help make masks for medical professionals using the school district's 3D printers. 

Lisa Weise, a biology and engineering teacher at Holt High School, is working with Superintendent David Hornak and Mary Wever -- a Holt Junior High science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics teacher -- to help address the medical supply shortages COVID-19 is causing. 

Public school teachers brought home several 3D printers from the schools and are creating face masks for health care workers. 

“You want to help,” Weise said to the Lansing State Journal. “You see these folks over in the hospitals trying to do their job, but they need to be protected."

Making a mask takes a few steps. First, the headband is created, which can take 45 to 90 minutes. After that, a laminate shield and elastic are attached to it. Those working on the masks are asking for donations of elastic, laminate, filament and money, which will help the work continue. 

“We’ll keep doing it as long as there is a need,” Wever told the Lansing State Journal. 

But Holt High School and Holt Junior High aren't the only schools in East Lansing taking advantage of 3D printers to help the community. 

Christian Palasty, director of technology for East Lansing Public School District, also began using 3D printers to help make face masks for medical officials, the Lansing State Journal reported. 

The school district has now partnered with tinkrLAB, a learning center in Meridian Mall, to make as many masks as they can to provide to health care workers. 

“When we started talking yesterday, it was like, we have all of these printers and we have these people at home with their printers. What can we do?” Melissa Rabideau, tinkrLAB founder and owner, told the Lansing State Journal.  “In the maker world and in the tinker world, this is a place where we can step up and do things for the community.”

There are now schoolteachers using the 3D printers at home, 45 3D printers at tinkrLAB and more in the MacDonald Middle School lab producing essential face masks for the medical community. 

But materials are still needed to produce the masks.  A GoFundMe campaign was created to raise money for the project. Rabideau said the goal was $3,500, but the campaign has raised over $17,000 to date. 

Dori Leyko, the East Lansing Public Schools Superintendent, said when she posted what they were doing on the school district's Facebook page, many other schools wanted to participate. 

“It refocuses people onto something really positive happening in the community,” Leyko told the Lansing State Journal.