INNOVATION-July-August-2020

F E A T U R E

Negative and positive 3-D printed molds used for Can-Mask prototyping. P hoto : P aul J ospeh /UBC.

“Our first thought was to create something made from local materials, that could be manufactured locally to shorten the supply chain, and that would also be biodegradable,” said Foster. It won’t stop careless people from dropping them by the wayside, but will ensure the masks do no harm, and good citizens will save them for the compost bin. Because the virus dies on fibre surfaces within a couple of days, said Foster, “you could even compost them in your garden.” Foster and Rojas brought in UBC assistant professor of teaching Dr. Casey Keulen, P.Eng., to handle the technical side of creating what they are calling the Can-Mask. Keulen is experienced in thermoforming, where “we heat up the material and pull it down over a form or a mold, then put a vacuum inside of it that

kind of sucks it down and shapes it.” Primarily used for plastics, “it’s a high-scale production process that’s readily available. The unique part here is that we’re applying this to wood- fibre materials. That takes a combination of my background, which is mechanical by training, materials and manufacturing by experience, and the wood sciences aspect, which is what Johan and Orlando do for a living.” The big challenge, said Keulen, “was taking the standard off-the-shelf vacu-thermoforming process and applying that to the product that we’re working with, which is basically paper with some gelatin. We’ve gone from the very basic process of just taking the plastic out and putting the paper in, to now modifying the process so that we can control the temperature and, even more important,

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