Wichita's Largest Aviation Companies Team Up with WSU to Fight coronavirus Pandemic

Wichita’s largest aviation companies and Wichita State University are teaming up to make personal protective equipment for local healthcare workers and first responders.

Spirit AeroSystems, Textron Aviation and Airbus Americas are working with Wichita State and its affiliated technical college WSU Tech to manufacture face shields and disposable stethoscopes to aid in stopping the spread of COVID-19.

The group is working under the moniker “Ad Astra Coalition.”

So far, the coalition has been producing a small number of face shields made with 3D printers, a relatively slow manufacturing process. The shields block saliva and airborne germs from contacting people’s faces.

Soon, the clear face shields could be mass produced using injection molding, said Rob Gerlach, director of intellectual property and technology transfer at Wichita State.

“Textron Aviation has this amazing cutting technology that we’re using to be able to cut materials quickly. Spirit AeroSystems is tooling up to be able to injection mold. So we have the technologies and the capability there,” he said.

Wichita State also is working with Airbus on a disposable stethoscope project when the 3D printers become available, he said. The stethoscopes, which are used to listen to sounds made by the heart and lungs, could be produced at a rate of 40 to 50 a day.

“We’re hoping to start creating as early as Monday,” Gerlach said.

“If the demand continues to increase on those disposable stethoscopes then you’ll quickly outstrip pace of what you’re able to do on the 3D printers,” Gerlach said. “And we’ll look to see if it might make sense to start to explore another option like tooling up (to mass produce them).”

Not all of the devices have been approved for medical use. It’s up to those using the devices to sign a liability waiver before using the equipment.

“Everything that we’re doing on the Ad Astra Coalition will not be FDA (Food and Drug Administration) certified or certified for medical use by any other federal agency,” he said.

Instead, he said, the coalition is in regular communication with local healthcare providers and first responders to run their ideas by them before doing making large quantities.

“The last thing you want to do is put a lot of time and energy into making 10,000 of something that doesn’t fill a need,” he said.

The coalition comes on the heels of massive unpaid furloughs and shortened work weeks at Textron Aviation and Spirit AeroSystems, two of Wichita’s largest employers, that have put thousands of aircraft employees out of work.

Spirit employees told The Eagle earlier this week that the company is preparing to fly some furloughed workers to California for training to eventually begin manufacturing medical devices in Wichita.

“Obviously, the aviation industry right now is not doing what we would hope to be doing from an economy standpoint,” Gerlach said. “But they haven’t lost their unbelievable engineering skills and expertise and the equipment they have.”

The main thing standing in the coalition’s way is funding, he said. Funding for the coalition is coming from area hospitals and donations to the Wichita State University Foundation’s COVID-19 Innovation Forward Fund, Gerlach said.

“Money received in that fund is going to go directly to aiming to solve this problem,” he said.

“As long as we keep receiving funds, and we keep exploring more options, I have confidence that we can continue to explore the number of projects that we’re looking at,” he said.

“We’ll start here locally with Wichita and Sedgwick County, and then we’ll start to go to the rural areas, as well.”

The production of PPE right now doesn’t necessarily mean this type production will continue for long, Gerlach said, just until supplies become available again. After that, he said, the group plans to tackle the problem of getting the local economy back up and running in the wake of the coronavirus.

“Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is bridge that time period so all of our supply chains can catch back up,” he said.

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