News Photo by Julie Riddle Steve Tezak, director of the STARBASE Alpena program, uses the program’s 3D printers on Thursday to create face shields for local medical personnel.

ALPENA — If you can’t buy it, you can make it.

Steve Tezak, at the headquarters of the STARBASE Alpena program at Alpena’s Combat Readiness Training Center on Thursday, explained how he used a rubber band, a three-hole punch, and a few zip ties — together with a couple of fancy pieces of machinery — to create a weapon to wield in the battle against the coronavirus.

With medical safety equipment in dangerously short supply, northern Michigan individuals and businesses are joining others worldwide in going hands-on to provide masks, hand sanitizer, and other vital tools, creating an arsenal of health care with the skills and supplies they have to offer.

Small manufacturers considering retooling to produce critical health and human service supplies to counteract the COVID-19 outbreak can apply for state grants of $10,000 to $150,000, to a total of $1 million.

Even without that funding, people are finding a way to help.

In Alpena, Tezak, the director of STARBASE — which he calls a hands-on, minds-on program for junior high students — considered creating medical face shields for the local hospital because of a suggestion from his mother-in-law.

Before long, Tezak connected with Alpena surgeon Dr. Mark Puls to see if there was something he and his printers could do to aid in the fight against COVID-19.

Much-sought-after N95 masks require a flexible material not compatible with the Starbase printers, but Tezak found a design for a face shield — made of a colored plastic visor and detachable, see-through shield — that could be made in his machines.

Once permission was granted by the U.S. Department of Defense, which funds the STARBASE program, Tezak set to work.

A request to his supplier met with an immediate donation of the materials needed to make the visors, and coils of plastic the width of spaghetti were soon ready to be tucked into the STARBASE machines.

At first, Tezak said, his visors came in a sensible gray color. He rethought that choice after he was told nurses were fighting over the few red models he made, changing to cheerful blue and orange options.

The visors, which fit snugly around the head with the aid of a simple rubber band at the back, wouldn’t be much good without an attached clear face shield to keep medical staff safe.

“I was, literally, running around the building, saying, ‘I have to make a prototype. What am I going to make it out of?'” Tezak said.

‘LIVING IN A SCIENCE FICTION FILM’

Unable to obtain the Plexiglas called for in the official design, Tezak found a substitute: laminating film, run through the laminating machine to gain thickness, and finished off with a three-hole punch so it could be attached to the visor, a zip tie securing a flyaway corner.

So far, the resourceful creator has made upwards of 60 face shields, all of them taken to MidMichigan Medical Center-Alpena, where they are used to protect workers in the emergency room, the intensive care unit, and outpatient clinics.

“I feel like I’m living in a science fiction film sometimes,” Tezak said — still, after years of working with the printers, amazed at their capability to produce something that exists nowhere else in the world, just when it’s needed most.

The idea that stemmed from a simple suggestion from his mother-in-law has expanded outside the area, with two other STARBASE locations in Michigan now making the face shields as well, after Tezak shared the design.

Once the local hospital is supplied, Tezak has permission to keep making the face shields, sharing them with health care centers out of the area.

“It’s exciting to know I’m helping,” Tezak said, delighting in the idea’s spread. “You live in a small town, you can make a bigger difference.”

ARSENAL OF HEALTH CARE

In another part of town, Thunder Bay Junior High School teacher Bob Thomson — kept from his classroom and separated from his students — is using the school’s collection of 3D printers to create N95 masks to arm medical workers with a vital tool to keep themselves safe.

A dozen printers, pulled from his classroom and robotics program lab, now fill Thomson’s front porch, where he prints the masks with the help of his kids, their practiced hands preparing the masks for shipping.

The printers that usually bring to life the designs of curious and creative students now make the masks so desperately needed downstate, where Thomson sends them for use at Lansing hospitals, his carrier bringing back more supplies to make more masks.

Other Alpena teachers are making the masks as well, Thomson said, the printers purchased to spark student ingenuity put to use while school hallways are silent.

There’s an online community of mask-printers, too, Thomson said. Print Force, a Facebook-based group of 3-D printing enthusiasts-turned-heroes, shares design ideas and tips for making medical gear to donate. Weather stripping adds cushion to face masks, one commenter said — joining a state’s worth of voices trying to do their part and do it a little better.

Other hands-on efforts around northern Michigan are offering creativity to fill a need. A Petoskey distillery halted production of vodka to produce hand sanitizer for the local hospital. A Grand Traverse County company is making keychains that can be used to open doors and press buttons without touching them.

At-home crafters and seamstresses by the dozens are stepping up to sew fabric masks to send to health care workers, the elderly, and people in the high-risk category.

Mark Hall, emergency services coordinator for Alpena County, said the need for medical supplies, especially personal protective equipment, is tremendous, with almost no supplies coming north from downstate.

It’s not easy for companies to create needed goods themselves, the availability of raw materials in short supply all over the world. Businesses also have to think of their employees first, Hall said, not letting the desire to help lead to putting anyone in danger.

For anyone who has found a way to safely create something that could help Northeast Michigan through a trying time, and a possibly more-trying time to come, he’d like to hear about it, Hall said.

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693, jriddle@thealpenanews.com or on Twitter @jriddleX.