Inspired by the strong desire to contribute to society in fighting against the corona pandemic, Team Pelican has developed a fully automatic machine for manufacturing N95 masks. This special-purpose machine has been conceptualized, designed, and built within an incredibly short time of just three weeks and Pelican is now taking this further by building five more lines that would help India produce N95 masks on a large scale.
A Made in India Marvel
The first machine will produce more than 25,000 face masks per day. More machines are under manufacturing. COVID warriors – doctors, nurses, medical attendants, lab technicians, hospital staff – no longer need to worry about the supply of international quality N95 face masks in the required quantities.
After ramping up production capacities to meet demand, Pelican can comfortably export and help other countries needing help. Face masks are critical personal protective devices that, when used correctly, protect the users against aerosol/droplet borne/air-borne infections. It is one of the most critical needs of all the COVID warriors and patients. It is mandatory for health workers to use N95 masks.
The general public could not use them since N95 masks are in short supply. To date, all major high filtration and protective equipment were getting imported. The supplies dried up since overseas suppliers started needing huge volumes for their own consumption as the pandemic spread.
The N95 masks are made of multiple fabric layers for filtration, welded together, a nose wire/metal strip inserted, ties for ear loops welded automatically, and folded in a manner that gives a good facial fit. A complex machine is needed to make masks and it must be fast yielding high output.
A number of machines manufacturers and raw material suppliers from Taiwan, South Korea, and China were contacted for the supply of the machines even though airlifting. Not only were the costs high but more critically, there was no guarantee on the quality of some of the Chinese machines and no certainty regarding deliveries time. Hence, Pelican decided to make one for India.
Pelican Rotoflex of Rajkot decided that they must leverage their well-honed technical and project management skills in conceptualizing, designing, manufacturing, and successfully installing and running high precision – mass production machines for the packaging industry that are comparable to global standards. Numerous technologies such as metallurgy, new generation electronics from Siemens, pneumatics, web handling, forming / folding/welding were used – all within its in-house R&D facility.
“Great support from Government of India and active personal encouragement of the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Gujarat, Vijaybhai Rupani; good deliberations on this thought with Nitinbhai Bharadwaj; necessary techno-commercial information from Kalpakbhai Maniar time to time; active support from D. K. Shah; required guidance on fabric from Lalitbhai Kagathra; and some assistance from Dineshbhai Karia and Hasmukhbhai Hindocha – helped Team Pelican reach its objective smoothly. And we are very thankful for all the support from the local government bodies,” says Bharat Shah, owner of Pelican Rotoflex.
“Our team of over 150 engineers working round the clock, made the dream of developing Mask Making Machine to reality in just around 20 days,” says Vijay Shah of Pelican Rotoflex. Pelican is aiming to manufacture over 100,000 high-quality N-95 masks per day very soon.
