Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas 

There are many definitions for hacks and hackers. While the most common use of hacker may be in reference to someone who gains illegal access to someone’s computer or computer account, in the maker world, hacker is used to describe someone who tries to make useful things from the tools, materials and resources that happen to be available. So, a hacker might hack an existing device, tool or material to make something useful for a current purpose. It’s this kind of hacker we’ll discuss today, not the kind that steals your identity. 

In the older days, we called them tinkerers. Today we call them hackers. Nearly all the great innovations in the world came from hackers. A college drop out named Bill Gates saw the value in an operating system discarded by IBM and created MS-DOS and a company called Microsoft. Larry Page and Sergey Brin develop a search engine in a garage and called it Google. On a side note, a very successful, 100-year-old venture capital company called Bessemer Venture Partners passed on opportunities to invest in Google six times. Sometimes the new hacks are not recognized by the big players in the marketplace. The number of hacks and hackers increase in times of adversity. 

There will be more useful hacks and innovation than we could have imagined resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. More important, the medical industry might learn some things from the hackers; that we don’t need to depend on existing established companies to take 10 years of research and development to bring products, especially devices and apparatus to the marketplace. 

In the current shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) hackers have come forward with designs for new solutions while the supply chain catches up. We keep being told that the supply chain is catching up, yet we keep hearing about the shortages, so we keep hacking. 

Fab Lab ICC colleague, Tim Haynes and I haven’t really hacked anything new, but we are working to help alleviate the shortage. The cool think about the Fab Lab and maker movement was that it was built on sharing hacks from the beginning. Maker Spaces having certain capabilities in common, i.e. 3D printing and laser etching means that when a hacker, anywhere in the world, makes something useful, like the N95 mask substitute or the face shield, the design files can be emailed to other makers. 

We started out working on the N95 substitute and are working through a problem. The 3D printed versions are rigid, heavy and uncomfortable. Meanwhile, one of the medical institutions told us they had plenty of masks but it’s face shields they can’t get. So, we shifted primary focus while solving the mask problem and are producing 3D printed head bands and using the laser to cut holes in 8 ½ x 11 clear report covers to snap in place on the headbands to create a face shield. From Fab Labs and maker spaces to commercial 3D printing companies, we are trying to alleviate shortages as best we can while the big players in the market, retool to mass produce PPE. 

We won’t ever know exactly what will be in short supply during a crisis. Although I don’t know of any maker spaces that have figured out a way to hack a toilet paper solution, they are providing much needed PPE across the country. From our perspective as a maker space, one of the best concepts that could come from this pandemic is the discovery that maker spaces can be useful and nimble in providing short term solutions while the supply chain catches up. Every community should have a Fab Lab or maker space.  

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks. Archive columns and podcast at jimcorrell.com.