Local scouts making masks for hospital

Intrigued by the creative possibilities available with a 3D printer, Trey Rice saved up his Christmas and birthday money to purchase one in late February. The Columbia Falls freshman had the machine only a month — during which he got to play with making earbud and cell phone cases — before he began using it non-stop to produce reusable N95 mask shells for Kalispell Regional Medical Center.

Rice is one of 25 young men and women in the Columbia Falls Scout Boy Scout troops 1941 and 1941G who have taken up the call to create personal protective equipment for medical workers. The troops, who prioritize community service as their guiding ethos, decided to make this their latest official project after discovering that many of the scouts had already begun to make the masks independently, said Troop 1941 assistant scoutmaster Julie King. Two of the community events the troops contribute to, Clean the Falls and the Family Forestry Expo, have been canceled.

Many of the scouts have focused their efforts on sewing cloth masks, most of which will be donated to the Montana Vets Home. Another troop member, junior assistant scoutmaster Kyler King, owns a 3D printer and is fabricating N95s for the hospital along with Rice. Both Rice and King were introduced to the machines through their industrial arts class at Columbia Falls High School.

Originally, Rice, a 4-H member that participates in sewing and raising pigs, began sewing cloth masks for the hospital after a family friend who worked at North Valley started sewing them for her co-workers. It wasn’t long after taking up the project, said his mother Jessica Rice, that the family began to see Facebook posts about medical professionals in Billings who had designed a model for 3D printing reusable face masks. The Rices quickly looked up whether the hospital would take 3D printed masks and then found Kalispell Regional Healthcare’s “Project PPE” website.

The website outlines the hospital’s goals of accumulating personal protective equipment for its staff, including acquiring 10,000 masks. It outlines what the hospital is accepting and provides instructions and specific patterns on how to make everything from sewn and printed masks, to surgical caps, to plastic face shields. The instructions the hospital provided for printed masks ended up being a link to the Billings innovators site the Rices had just seen on Facebook.

The design, dubbed the “Montana Mask,” has now been printed globally, with over 30,000 downloads for the printing code file. The design features a fitted plastic face mask with an open window near the mouth where a square of cloth filter, cut from a typical surgical mask, can be inserted and kept in place by a printed plastic ring. A finalized mask includes elastic bands to keep it in place and weather stripping to create a seal around the mask, but Kalispell Regional Medical Center is asking for people to donate only the shells, which, with the cost of plastic, average to about $2.50 per mask.

Rice already had the type of plastic required, a commonly used PLA that comes coiled on a spool, and he began printing immediately once he downloaded the file freely available on makethemasks.com. The process takes about six hours to create one mask, and Rice has been trying to finish two a day. He was able to donate his first batch of 10 to the hospital last Monday, April 6.

Rice is nearing the end of his plastic supply, he said, but should have enough to continue until the next shipment, which has been delayed due to higher demand, arrives. The next batch will feature a variegated plastic that should result in masks marbled in the colors of the rainbow. Rice plans on continuing production until there is no longer a need.

To date, the Columbia Falls Scouts BSA Troops 1941 and 1941G have donated over 160 masks.