Lessons learnt learnt from Nigeria – building digital production capabilities to meet community local needs for PPE and Medical Equipment
Established in 2017, the Clintonel Innovation Centre (CIC) in Aba, Nigeria’s first Makerspace, Nigeria trains young people in product design, digital fabrication, and manufacturing. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Clintonel founder Tochukwu Chukwuekelinton quickly saw that importation of medical supplies and PPE was going to get harder. So, he decided to intervene by building local alternatives, and wanted to respond. As a result, Clintonel have worked with COVIDaction Local Production Local Solutions (LPLS) to build production capability for producing medical equipmentsupplies and PPE via digital manufacturing and circular economy approaches. In doing so, Clintonel have significantly developed their capabilities, and ability to react to any future shocks.
“The support we got from the COVIDaction program enabled us to scale our capacity for production. With the enlarged capacity we have now, if there was another pandemic, we can produce a reasonable volume of PPE and CPAP devices’’.
However, over this period Clintonel have also faced challenges, including shipping delays that held up the delivery of essential digital fabrication machines. Clintonel have learned valuable lessons about what’s needed to set up and run an effective digital manufacturing facility.makerspace.
Developing a distributed manufacturing facility makerspace to produce PPE and medical equipment
Through their work working with COVIDaction LPLS, Clintonel have pivoted their operations to deliver PPE, including face shields, masks, social distancing mats and Injection moulds necessary for face shield production. Through the use of digital fabrication techniques — especially 3D printing of face shields — they were able to accelerate production and produced three times more PPE when compared to the start of the pandemic. In addition to 3D printing, they are building injection moulds for mass production. Through these moulds they would be able to produce 100 times more PPE.
In addition to PPE production, Clintonel wanted to develop their capacity to produce medical devices. After exploring a range of possibilities, they landed on a decision to produce CPAP machines — breathing aids that can help keep COVID-19 patients out of intensive care.
Thanks to breakthroughs with UCL Ventura these CPAP machines can now be reproduced in different parts of the world with technical support from UCL3D printed, and the designs are free available for makers like Clinton to start their own production.
Clintonel quickly identified the benefits to producing these machines for the Nigeria market.
“The story of the CPAP started from the COVID-19 pandemic…Nigeria, and other countries- in Africa, are import dependent. We could not survive without importing. Almost all the medical equipment we use in Nigeria is imported…that was the motivation for developing medical equipment. Aside from survival, we wanted to adapt some of these equipment to meet the unique needs of our environment”
Indeed, Clintonel identified that through digital manufacturing techniques CPAP machines could be produced in Nigeria at a cost that is affordable for the Nigerian market. CPAP machines are much more affordable than ventilators and are much easier to operate. This led Clintonel to decide to produce CPAP machines. After obtaining license and technical support from UCL Ventura team, Clintonel has produced their first 3D printed prototype of CPAP machine. This involved 3D printing a range of parts, which are then assembled in the makerspace. In addition to the 3D printed version, Clintonel is about to complete a second prototype fabricated through 4 axis CNC machining and CNC lathe machining.
Over the year Clintonel plan to scale up production of these CPAP devices, including working with medical professionals to identify the adaptations that might be needed for the CPAP machines to meet the needs of the Nigerian market.
Building Distributed Manufacturing Capacity — Challenges Faced and Lessons Learnt
While Clintonel have managed to increase PPE production and prototype CPAP devices, they have, nevertheless, faced a range of challenges in getting to this position.
One significant challenge for Clintonel was around importing the digital manufacturing machinery needed to produce CPAP devices (including CNC lathe and 4th axis milling machines). In particular, they experienced months of delays waiting to receive the equipment, as well as delays securing the necessary regulatory approvals. This significantly impacted their ability to quickly upscale production in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
After importing the equipment the next challenge was installation — the manufacturers were not available in Nigeria for onsite support. So the Clintonel team had to learn to install the machines themselves.
‘When we received the equipment, we faced an installation challenge. We had to build the capability to install the equipment by ourselves’’
And after installation there were challenges accessing the right raw materials needed to make medical devices from the local market. Clintonel wanted to find local and sustainable sources of materials — in order to ensure that production remained resilient to outside shocks (like global supply chain disruptions). However, there were challenges accessing the right materials on the local market, and over time Tochukwu began to question, ‘‘Are the materials we need actually available locally’’.
‘’’We found that the dealers or sellers of materials in the informal sector did not know or use the names of materials that were listed in the UCL Ventura specifications. For steel, for example, there are several types with different chemical compositions. But in our local market, steel is steel. They don’t know about the different types of steel. Same with aluminium and plastics.’’
Despite these challenges Clintonel remain committed to sourcing local materials — and intend to conduct their own testing in order to identify local material specifications needed for CPAP and PPE designs. Overall Tochukwu is very proud of what Clintonel have been able to achieve, while the makerspace has faced challenges, there’s plenty of reasons to be optimistic for the future.
“I see a bright future for our makerspace — because I see the increase in advanced engineering skills, and I see potential attention from governments and investors’’
‘‘There is a serious scarcity of engineering skills in Nigeria. We are now training lots of engineering students; soon Nigeria will have skilled engineering graduates who can design and build new products’’.
TOP TIPS for setting up and running a digital manufacturing makerspace
If you’re interested in starting your own digital fabrication makerspace, see below for Tochukwu’s top tips!
Top tips for importing digital fabrication equipment
● Consider importing goods by air — this will come with added costs but will help to avoid the kinds of delays we experienced with shipping by sea.
● If you are shipping by sea — consider shipping a ‘Full Container Load’, to reduce the number of countries the container may need to visit en route.
● When importing an equipment, consider working with logistic experts who can handle the logistics of importing goods — including extensive documentation involved.
● Start early — we experienced delays getting approvals from various government agencies — ‘‘the earlier you start the better’’.
● When procuring equipment, always make contingencies in your budget — it’s safer to be over budget and underspend than to be under budget and over spend.
Top tips for manufacturing new products
● The easiest approach to manufacturing is to reproduce an existing product. Having access to the drawings and guides from UCL was extremely helpful — it’s best to have access to this technical guidance. Start with this easiest approach — so that you and your team can build experience and skill to eventually make your own designs.
● Talk to others in your community, or even globally, to share designs, skills and ideas.
● Do thorough market research — in our case that meant with medical personnel, end users and retailers.
● Find locally available materials or components to replace imported ones.
● For things like PPE and medical devices, research requirements for approval by local (and international) regulatory bodies.
