Schwenksville’s DJM Print’s Needed Shields
This post was originally published by Joe Zlomek in the Schwenksville Post.
SCHWENKSVILLE PA; Lori Buckman Moes, a self-proclaimed construction technology enthusiast, personally knows nurses who are warriors in the battle against the coronavirus outbreak. And she guessed the company she co-founded with her husband Dan; DJM Design, CAD, and Coordination Services Inc., at 395 Main St. might be able to help them.
On Monday (April 6, 2020) DJM, which in part provides its clients with three-dimensional printing and building modeling services, produced 100 sterilized face shields to protect doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel. They’re intended to keep those professionals, who constantly deal with COVID-19 infected patients, from contracting the disease.
That first batch was delivered to Einstein Medical Center Montgomery in East Norriton PA. Then DJM printed another hundred. And another, and another. As of Wednesday (April 8), with 10 printers working non-stop, a total of 411 masks had gone out the door with more to follow. Several other area hospitals are on the recipient list.
Similar-looking masks available from online retailers sell for anywhere between $20 and $115 each. DJM isn’t charging a dime.
“We’re doing it pro-bono,” Moes acknowledged during a phone interview. “It’s just something we can do to help,” she said, and if it shows others that DJM is available to perform this kind of work, “we’ll hope for that as well,” she added.
DJM’s not alone. Like it, other high-tech firms nationwide are stepping up to fill what a CNN story published Monday called a “desperate need” for the “plastic headgear resembling a welding mask.”
John Brown, head of DJM’s Scanning Division, said DJM was fortunate to find an equally generous donor of face shield designs in Isaac Budmen Industries LLC, a company that manufactures 3-D printers. It supplied the design file at no cost and without copyright claims, Brown said, because Budmen also wants to be part of the coronavirus solution.
“It’s a whole snowball effect,” Brown noted.
Lori, the company’s chief financial officer, hasn’t yet determined the amount of investment DJM is making in the effort. For now, she added, she’s not interested in counting. She’s simply thankful that husband and company president Dan, their son Matt Webster, Brown, and others are tending to the printers in shifts around the clock.
What really interests her now, Moes said, is production. How fast can pieces get printed? “Can we get (them) out quickly?,” she asks. Because there are lives at stake.
