As supply chains contract and the industry prepares for the worst, one designer is putting his energies into creating solutions for the current crisis in healthcare and asking the industry for help. Don Peifer, founder of Lunera and currently furloughed Creative Director for Legrand’s Lighting Sector, has designed a disinfecting mask that is rechargeable and solar-powered.
“Much of innovation comes from finding things that already exist and modifying,” says Peifer. “I have a camping light that has PV, micro-USB and multi-mode LED arrays in a tiny package. I thought that if I swapped the light source for UV-C LED capable of disinfection, added a mixing chamber that would keep the UV off the skin, it could be doable.”
The hope is to engage the lighting community to help answer the logistic and technical questions. “I designed this in a day,” Peifer adds “so I don’t expect it to be bulletproof. I wanted to bring something embryonic to the table ASAP in order to have people with specific expertise like EE and ME drive value.” Possible next steps could be crowd-funding with all the proceeds feathered into tooling and OEM logistics. If interested in helping, please reach out to Don at [email protected].