35 years ago the fire department didn't
respond to
a fraction of what it responds to now.
The expectations of the fire department were much less than they are now.
General automation in society
so sprinkler systems and automatic fire alarms
have changed the job responsibilities of a firefighter tremendously
have put a bigger demand on the fire service.
So the stuff that we carry now to respond to those sort of emergencies
has changed things dramatically
and they're all consumable items that need to be tracked.
When I started in 1978 in the fire department
no axe had an expiration date on it
either it worked or it didn't.
And now, that's all kind of changed.
So the need for technology has really, really ramped up.
This is an RFID inventory tag.
So it's a radio frequency tag
which means it can be scanned from a few meters away.
The iPod that's attached to this reader has an app built into it.
And this gives us the ability to come to a compartment like this
quickly scan the tags that are in there
and produce a very quick inventory
of what we need in the compartment or
what's potentially missing
or has been damaged and has been turned in for repair.
It very quickly gives the firefighters the chance to scan the truck
and know that the vehicle is ready for them to
respond to a call the minute they come
into work.
We have a requirement that we have a certain amount of equipment
before that truck can be in service
before it's ready to respond to anything.
And using this technology we can guarantee
that readiness from shift to shift.
So we found out that we'd have a tag
it'd be on there for a few days and
we'd finally respond to some sort of event
and we got all our stuff back but we
wouldn't get any tags back.
They had been knocked off either from
heat causing the adhesives to release
friction of something striking the object and peeling it from the surface
Those kinds of problems.
Because the fire service is
a tough place to be a little tag
the adhesive strips on the back don't hold
up as well as they would in another application.
So we're using 3D printing to create a better area
to embed the tags so they're more durable in our environment.
Counting hose couplings, all the consumable items in an EMS bag
you could easily go over 400 or 500 items.
We carry a wide variety of stuff that ranges from removing smoke from a building
to having the tools to rescue
people from automobile accidents.
We also do water rescue, so there's a wide variety of stuff that has to be tracked every single day
and having one tag that can go onto a piece of wood or onto a generator, or a light
just isn't really possible.
So 3D printing gives us the ability
to create that bridge between the tag itself and the object we're trying to track.
trying to track so since the adhesives
don't hold up in the long term for us
we're looking for ways for mechanically
fastening our tags to a device
that was really never intended to have one on it.
All of our items have been well designed, they're well-engineered
and so for us just to take something and stick it on the side of it
isn't always a great option.
So what we've done is disassembled some of these things
and we're replicating one of their parts on the 3D printer
and building a pocket in there we can stuff a tag into so we can inventory stuff.
It makes the item trackable for us easily, but it doesn't change the
function of the item for someone that's
never seen the tags before.
That's really what we're after, is we're
looking for a way to mechanically
fasten those tags without altering the
item too much
and being able to hide the tag
to where it doesn't influence the function.
And kind of keep it out of the heat and keep it out of the weather, all those sort of things.
Everybody has the same issues
they're having the same increased workload and the same burdens put on them
and everybody's kind of looking for an answer for it.
And so that's what we're doing here
is trying to provide the framework for at least one way
to solve these kind of problems going forward.
