About the Team

Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, David Fergenson of Livermore Instruments Inc., a small Bay Area mass spectrometer manufacturer, responded to the ventilator crisis. After consulting with experts on three continents, David realized that the most expedient way to meet the global demand for ventilators was to create an open source Bird Mark 7 (Mark 7) with an updated design to add modern safety features and streamline it for mass production.





On March 20, 2020, an old Mark 7 arrived and a couple engineers, Mike Kjelson and Dietrich Nordmeyer from Energy Recovery, along with Chenise Leveriza of DevonWay, volunteered their after work hours and weekends to bring this project online with one goal in mind: to save lives. With their dedication, and with the sacrifices made by their families, they produced this STEP file of an as-built Bird Mark 7 in 11 days.

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Friends from National Strategic Research Institute (NSRI) and UC Davis started their relentless efforts to find funding and technological support for the project. Autodesk provided CAD software for us and Asana provided project management tools. A call from a stranger, Alex Izvorski, brought in help from 3D Systems who, along with Waygate Technologies, performed the 3D metrology of the manifold.