by Stacia Friedman

In the basement of his home, Peter Randall, director of engineering and robotics at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy (SCH), watches over three 3D printers as they churn out emergency medical face shields.

“Each one prints out one shield per hour, 24 masks a day, and we will run them through April,” said Randall, who is working in concert with SCH middle school engineering and robotics teacher David Cool. 

Their goal? To supply Penn Health Systems and other local hospitals with emergency protective equipment than can be sterilized and reused. The concept originated with SCH alumnus Evan Weinstein, who graduated from Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science in 2019.

“While he was a student, he ran Penn’s 3D Printer Labs at Pennovation Center,” Randall said. “Evan came up with the idea to print medical face shields and reached out to everyone who has access to 3D printers.”

According to Randall, Weinstein started his brainstorming at SCH. He wanted to produce chocolate on a 3D printer. Think Willy Wonka meets Albert Einstein. Weinstein wanted to go outside of the usual confines of chocolate bars and molds. While a student at Penn, he presented his prototype at the 2017 World Maker Faire.

He went on to win the Miller Innovation Fellowship at Penn, and the week he graduated, he was accepted into the Pennovation Accelerator program. Graduate school is on hold while Weinstein fine tunes the printing process for his Cocoa Press. Meanwhile, he is responding to the pandemic by orchestrating mass production of medical face shields and serving as a conduit between his former SCH instructors, Randall and Cool, and the growing need for protective gear.

Using 3D printers in innovative ways is integral to SCH’s Engineers and Robotics Program, which all students take from first through ninth grade. Every ninth grader must learn basic micro-processing, a system that would probably baffle most parents. Older students are exposed to more complex computer programming used in the creation of robots and drones.

“Some are working on a four-passenger airplane,” said Randall, a 1969 Chestnut Hill Academy graduate (long before the merger of the school with Springside). “Project-based learning is at the heart of SCH. My sisters attended Springside, and so did my wife.”

After receiving an engineering degree from Princeton and an MBA at Penn's Wharton School, Randall, who is now teaching his students online, created several successful businesses and served on the Board of Trustees at SCH for 12 years.

“I knew they were looking for a Director of Technology,” he said. “I started out running after-school projects and realized there was a huge demand for incorporating engineering and robotics into the curriculum.”

Student response has been enthusiastic.

“Girls make up 50 percent of our elective classes, and 10 percent of SCH grads go on to major in engineering at MIT, Princeton, Georgia Tech, etc.,” Randall said. “When we compete in international robotics competitions, we usually finish in the top 10. Last year, we won first place in the World Robotics Championship with over 7,000 schools competing.”

David Cool brings an international perspective to SCH.

“I was working in Bhutan to establish a digital fabrication lab there in coordination with MIT,” said Cool whose background contains a mix of fine art and technology.

He first heard of the effort to create emergency medical gear on 3D printers through a Lower Merion Chinese American Facebook Group comprised primarily of medical professionals and academics.

“I also heard about the international effort to respond to the pandemic through MIT’s Fab Lab Network which connects people in over 60 countries simultaneously” he said. “The Network provides industry experts to help over 1,000 labs worldwide to distribute emergency medical masks. There is strength in numbers.”

In the last few days, Cool has run five 3D printers all day, producing 100 emergency face shields.

“There are newer technologies that could speed up the process, such as printers that use laser cutting or water jet cutting. That could ramp up 3D printing to factory scale,” he said.

In his online classes at SCH, Cool doesn’t just show students how he is producing desperately needed medical gear, he challenges them by asking what they would do to improve the process.

“This ability to produce whatever your community needs shows immense opportunity in education. These skills will be needed in their future.”

Stacia Friedman is a Mt. Airy resident, novelist and freelance writer for several websites and area publications.