By Luke Voogt
A Wandana Heights engineer has adapted protective barrier designs to shield Geelong health professionals against the spread of COVID-19.
Lachlan Patrick used a laser cutter and 3D printer to prototype an intubation box, which prevents droplet transfer from patients to health professionals.
His most recent versions also include a vent that can whisk away droplets using a vacuum, he explained.
“Think of it as an exhaust – it hooks up to pre-existing equipment,” the 24-year-old said.
Lachlan adapted the barrier from designs, currently in use in the fight against coronavirus overseas, to fit equipment at St John of God Geelong Hospital.
As Geelong Tech School’s program facilitator, he normally teaches high school students in the institute’s fabrication lab.
The lab’s design software and advanced equipment can produce components in hours that might otherwise take weeks or months to complete by hand, Lachlan explained.
With no classes running on location during the pandemic, he and other staff used the equipment to design the modified barrier.
“[The equipment] wasn’t being used, so we may as well use [it] to do something good,” he said.
Department of Education regulations prevent Lachlan and staff from manufacturing the boxes for actual use.
But St John of God could now take the designs and prototypes to a manufacturer, saving the hospital valuable time and money in the design process, he explained.
“If you get the design right then you can hand that over to reproduce and it will work well in that situation,” he said.
“A lot of costs come from the design and the time it takes to work out all the bugs.”
Using engineering to help in a crisis is nothing new for Lachlan.
After completing his mechatronics degree at Deakin University, he travelled to Vanuatu to help build shelters and water collection devices for people who fled a volcanic eruption on their island.
He also travelled to India with Global Village Project, a group of medical students who provide medical care to Third World communities.
Lachlan joined his partner Jo Eaton, the group’s operations director, at an orphanage where he helped design an irrigation system.
“We were always sort of thinking what’s the next thing we can work on,” he said.
“The personality quirk that defines most engineers is: if it’s broken, fix it, if it’s not broken, it doesn’t have enough features.”
Lachlan’s love of engineering grew as a child making Mecca sets, musical instruments, jigs and even a pinball machine with his electrical engineer grandfather John.
“From a young age we’d build things together,” he said.
“Something about machines quite appealed to me.”
