Beach High twins’ 3D-printed face shields protect Jackson doctors, local officials

As the world scrambles to find sturdy personal protective equipment in the coronavirus pandemic, some doctors and Miami Beach public officials are sporting face shields made with plastic red adjustable headbands and laminate sheets.

They’re the handiwork of 16-year-old twin brothers and their high school robotics team.

David and Jonathan Tamen, sophomores at Miami Beach Senior High, developed and marketed face shields with their personal 3D printer and laminator that are now used by the neurology unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital and at food distribution events sponsored by the City of Miami Beach. Their face shields may also soon be distributed by the city to anyone in need in order to leave gear on the market available to those on the front lines of COVID-19.

David has been tinkering with his 3D printer bought with his Bar Mitzvah money making trinkets like boats and skeletons since his 13th birthday. At the onset of the pandemic, he noticed other robotics teams were doing community projects printing masks.

He started to do the same, until he found a better solution: Face shields that could go over face masks.

“It’s useful because people can make the cloth masks themselves, but they can’t make face shields,” David said. “And with 3D printing I can do that and help people in the community.”

It took a few prototypes to reach a quality product. David tried out different models of headbands to see which was comfortable and best held the laminate sheet, used as the shield. He punched holes in the laminate plastic sheets to clip onto the headband.

David at first used laminate document protectors as the shield, but they were flimsy and hard to see through. Then he tried using two pieces of plastic with an adhesive, but the iron that fused the sheets together created bubbles. A $20 laminator ordered from Amazon did the trick.

He consulted with his neighbor, a neurologist at Jackson, on what would work for healthcare professionals.

“The doctors, they told us that they can sterilize just the headbands and the laminate sheets they can just throw out,” David said.

His brother Jonathan, the captain and entrepreneur of the robotics team, saw potential. He reached out to Miami Beach Commissioner Mark Samuelian and asked if face shields were something the city could use.

“As a team everyone wanted to make it but [we] didn’t want to make it until we knew who we were giving it to,” Jonathan said. “The same day we were working out how many were needed and when they needed it by. Once we started making the social media posts of the partnership with the city, now everybody’s seen it and everybody’s placing orders.”

The Tamen brothers don’t profit off the face shields. Any money earned goes toward the cost of the materials. It costs $1.50 to make a face shield.

So far, they’ve donated 10 shields to doctors at Jackson, then another 15. Twenty were given to Commissioner David Richardson for a food distribution event. An order of 80 face shields for the city is due this Saturday.

Robotics team in action

The Tamens tapped their robotics team members with 3D printers to also make headbands to keep up with demand. It takes one hour to make one headband, but they’re balancing that work with remote online learning for school.

“I find that I have a lot of free time on my hands to do projects like this and help out the community,” said Julius Goldberg, a 16-year-old sophomore who serves as the team’s designer. “I was definitely happy and enthusiastic and ready to help.”

The team also posted on its website a guide on how to make cloth masks to complement the face shields.

The students made a few face shields for the school staff at Miami Beach Senior High, still working to serve meals.

“They’re solving real-life problems,” said their principal, Maria Rodriguez. “They sit there and they try to create things that work generally to make products that work really good.”

Amedeo Merenda, a neurointensivist (a neurosurgeon with subspecialty training in critical care) is on the front line managing COVID-19 patients at Jackson’s repurposed neurosurgical intensive care unit. He said he wore one of the Tamens’ face shields for several hours Friday as he entered patients’ rooms.

“I found the face shields to be well built, comfortable to wear and perfectly suiting the purpose of protecting our faces from coming into contact with droplets potentially containing the virus [when worn in conjunction with masks and goggles],” Merenda wrote in an email. “Face shields like these are an essential equipment for us, and make our masks last longer.”

Commissioners pay for some shields

Richardson had about 20 face shields on hand for a food distribution event on Saturday. He said about five of his volunteers used the shields. He’s put in another order so they could be distributed to the public.

“We want to be able to have our code officers have a supply and we don’t want to go take supply out of our first responders’ inventory,” Richardson said. “That’s why I told David and Jonathan, if you have the capacity, make me some more and I’ll give them to Code Enforcement.”

Samuelian wore his face shield at a press conference with Gov. Ron DeSantis. He purchased the first round of shields.

“I was thrilled to wear it and I wanted to have it to be able to speak from a firsthand view of what these kids were doing,” Samuelian said. “It’s really wonderful.”

This story was originally published April 15, 2020 at 10:33 AM.