Heroes Among us: Employees Dedicate Free Time to Printing Ventilator Parts for Hospitals
Three Pratt & Whitney employees in Connecticut are taking their engineering talents outside the office, printing ventilator manifolds and other essential supplies to support hospitals as they respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Project engineers Jay Alessi and Adam Powojski, and Tomasz Backiel, a quality manager for the F135 engine program, are using their personal 3D printers to make supplies for Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. The supplies range from plastic bezels, which hold screens on a nurse’s call station to manifold devices, which allow one ventilator to be shared amongst multiple patients.
“The hospitals need these supplies now,” Powojski said. “The alternative is to have patients sitting in the hallway waiting for their turn on a ventilator. We feel that we can do better than that.”
Alessi, Backiel and Powojski work their respective Pratt & Whitney jobs by day and volunteer their personal time to 3D print medical supplies by night, for as many as 50 hours per week.
Their efforts have made a sizeable impact. When they began the project, Hartford Hospital had 100 ventilators with 78 in use. Although each ventilator is capable of servicing multiple patients at once, the current process used by the hospital involves fitting multiple connectors together, which is inefficient and unreliable. The manifolds the team is producing address these issues, providing a safer, more dependable system.
Despite the long hours and late nights, Alessi said the 3D printing work – and their desire to strengthen their community – is in his, Backiel and Powojski’s DNA.
“This is who we are as makers,” he said. “We can’t stop designing, creating, and coming up with new ways to make things better for everyone.”
Pratt & Whitney employees go beyond to help in the communities where they work and live. Employees making ventilator components must do so on their own time and not using company assets. All donations of components by individual employees are made on the behalf of the employee and are not made on behalf of the company.
Pratt & Whitney is part of Raytheon Technologies, which is using its manufacturing capacity, and engineering, logistics and finance expertise, to carry out initiatives that serve our communities, deliver on our commitments to our customers and protect our employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more about our efforts.
