Safety Shields

Originally inspired by 1. PPE for glasses 2. A pair of Oakley mars sunglasses A lot of my day to day in the 2024 involved interaction with construction workers. M-F I am in a hard hat, safety glasses, and steel toed boots all day long. From that I get to see a lot of different PPE (personal protective equipment) and one that I see every now and then are side shields. Side shields are used for people that wear glasses. Glasses alone don't suffice as PPE because they do not cover the side of your eyes to prevent something from getting into them, so they are an add on. I always thought for whatever reason they looked unintentionally super cool/fashionable, so I wanted to integrate them into a design. I was really interested in designing some circular lenses and drew some inspiration from the Oakley Mars Sunglasses that were very popular in the 90s. Oakley in the 90s put out some unreal designs that were way ahead of its time and I wanted to pay tribute to this in some way, but with my own spin on it. I bought a bronze-colored sheet of acrylic plastic in 2 different thicknesses for the frame and lenses. I used a coping saw to cut everything out. The coping saw is much easier to use than a regular hack saw because it is more manageable to control and it is flexible, so you can cut the curves much easier. For the hardware to connect the side pieces to the frame, I purchased some metal parts on etsy. There were 2 glasses made — I had to completely restart after I messed up the 1st pair. I wanted to get a rather dramatic curve to the lenses to fit the face better and to do that you can heat up acrylic plastic to make it flexible. To do this you can use a heat gun, hair dryer, etc. but if you heat it too quickly or too long you produce air bubbles in the plastic that you cannot get rid of. I did this on the 1st pair and learned my lesson on heating too long. Thus, I completely restarted and finished the second pair of glasses in the span of about 5 days.