N95 Decontamination Chambers
Helping Washington's first responders sanitize N95 masks.
University of Washington Press Release
University of Washington Product Website
Vashon Beachcomber Newspaper Article
Burn Design Lab Highlight Page
During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic I lived in Washington State, working as a mechanical engineering co-op for Burn Design Lab - a cookstove development nonprofit based on Vashon Island, near Seattle.
In May 2020, through an affiliation with BDL, I became involved with a University of Washington-led project to rapidly design and manufacture 50 portable ultraviolet decontamination systems for Washington first responders, to allow reuse of precious N95 masks during the pandemic. Manufacturing was contracted to Meadow Creature, a bespoke metal fabrication company co-located with Burn Design Lab on Vashon. A small team of Washington engineers was assembled to drive the project, and we began to meet on Zoom.
Thanks to relevant prior experience, I led the sheet metal CAD development within our team, using hand-sketches and Solidworks on my laptop. I worked full-time on the project, translating my CAD models into real prototypes alongside Meadow Creature and collaborating with the team on sheet metal assembly, mechanical testing, and physical prototyping. The design slowly matured, an electronics partner was identified, and a user interface took shape.
I helped transition the product from development into manufacturing and distribution, which entailed converting our shop into a manufacturing assembly line, reorganizing a manufacturing bill of materials, designing QA checklists, and working out manufacturing workflows with Meadow Creature.
Meadow Creature executed the waterjet cutting, bending, welding, and riveting for each principle component of the decontamination chambers; these were then delivered to our shop for final product assembly, electrical integration, and quality assurance. It was “all hands on deck” with our small staff. Our team of about four interns and employees stepped up to the challenge memorably, working in sync with our neighbors at Meadow Creature and teammates at UW to assemble and test each box.
When I left Washington at the end of August to resume full-time classes at Northeastern University, we had manufactured and delivered 5 complete decontamination units, and a training event had just been held at the UW campus to demonstrate the product to first responders, who would be future users.
As of time of writing, a production run of 50 boxes has been completed and distributed to fire departments around western Washington, with more on the way. I'm grateful I could have helped.
I also designed the User Manual for the product, which can be found here.