We were contacted by a man in Minnesota whose wife is a doctor in one of their hospitals. Her hospital was facing a problem with their PAPR suits. If you’re not familiar with PAPR (pronounced “paper”) suits, they’re used to protect workers from contaminated air and are being used increasingly since the COVID-19 outbreak. For extensive information see the wikipedia page. Under normal circumstances these suits do their job. A problem arises, however, if they need to be used for extended periods of time as the air is purified and pressurized via battery power. The person who contacted us had a brilliant idea and asked if we could assist in making it a reality. He wondered if it would be possible to hook the air supply inlet for the suit directly to the medial air supply wall outlets that are in many hospital rooms. This would take the battery out of the equation.
Fast forward thirteen design revisions and we had a fully functional and tested product! The STL files for part 1 and part 2 of this design can be downloaded here and here. If you have a similar project or need this modified to work for your suits shoot us a message at info@adirondackmountainresearch.org.