Staff from Lews Castle College and wind farm charity Point and Sandwick Trust (PST) have worked together to produce personal protective equipment (PPE) locally for NHS doctors and nurses, using facilities at the Innovation Centre sponsored by PST.
Visors to help protect frontline staff from contracting coronavirus have been made in the college’s new Innovation Centre using its 3D printer and were delivered to the health board’s Chris Anne Campbell by Point and Sandwick Trust’s engineering consultant, Tony Robson (pictured).
Six visor headbands, and packs of disposable clear plastic sheets to form the faceshields, were handed over after college staff came up with the PPE solution.
Although it takes one hour to print out each headband, 100 of them have been pledged to NHS Western Isles.
The headbands are being made using an approved design downloaded from the internet. The see-through plastic sheets clip on to the headbands and are easy to source – being an everyday office item – but the headband components are much more difficult to obtain.
NHS Western Isles chief executive Gordon Jamieson said: “We would like to thank all those in-volved in producing these visors. We are extremely grateful for these pieces of important PPE which will help ensure our staff are kept safe over the coming weeks and months.”
PST, which runs the Beinn Ghrideag wind farm near Stornoway for the sole benefit of the community, funded the expansion of the Innovation Centre at the Lews Castle College UHI campus, and the purchase of its first 3D printer, back in 2018.
PST is a charitable organisation in the Outer Hebrides which uses the income of community-generated wind power to support projects and organisations developing social, cultural, educational and environmental wellbeing.
The charity reinvests 100% of the profits from its Beinn Ghrideag wind farm – the largest UK community wind farm in terms of output (9MW) – in its local community.