3D Printing And COVID-19 Part 1
This post is the first of several, depending on how long the global COVID-19 pandemic lasts. I start this story on the weekend of March 28, 2020, as around this time the situation really begins to affect day to day life.
Finding A Niche
In March 2020 COVID-19 really started to affect day to day life the United States with stay at home and shelter in place orders, as well as a major shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers and first responders. On March 20 my friend Kathleen shared a link to Formlabs, which was forming a network to coordinate 3D printing supplies for healthcare workers. I would consider this to be the week my friends and I really started to search for the niche where we belonged, and we could help make a difference.
The Week Of March 22
I had focused most of my time on building a custom printer called a D Bot, which is an open source design I found online utilizing interesting core XY motion mechanics, as well as the first use of “V Slot” aluminum extrusions. My passion was really more focused on tinkering with the printer for the past year or two, as opposed to actually printing lots of stuff, and it always worked but never exactly how I wanted it to. I had been pushing the machine with an enthusiast “mod it until it breaks” mentality, so I was mostly learning about how the machines and 3D printing work.
Link to the D Bot:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1001065
Over the course of this week I ordered parts and got the printer back up and running, while researching the best way to help. The two most serious medical supply shortages were with N95 face masks, and ventilators. There were tons of 3D printable face mask designs on the internet, but the conclusion I drew was that while they were better than nothing, they were not suitable for healthcare staff to use, and were better left to people with sewing machines. Ventilators seemed too complex a problem to tackle, and this problem was being addressed at scale by automotive manufacturers.
3D printing found its niche in producing headbands for face shields. The leading two designs I found were the Prusa, pictured above on the left, and Verkstan, pictured above on the right. Most designs began with these two styles as a starting point, with the Verkstan being optimized for being able to print large quantities quickly, while the Prusa design felt more durable and comfortable for longer periods of wear.
Here is a link for the Prusa story and design;
https://www.prusa3d.com/covid19/#_ga=2.150282870.1520788975.1587657141-1140263262.1584645717
Here is a like to the Verkstan;
In parallel, my friend Dan (who happens to own a 3d printing business) had been printing prototype face shield and mask designs he found online, and was testing them out to see which ones he felt were the best. He also took the initiative to source a batch of plastic shield parts and elastic to complete the headbands, and reached out to several local hospitals to see who was in need of PPE.
Another friend of mine, Ryan, also owned a 3d printer and was looking to support his wife, a front line healthcare worker. He coordinated acquiring more printers with Dan, as well as procuring A1 overhead transparencies to use a face shields, and elastic.
At this point the three of us are forming a plan, sourcing raw materials, determining how best to process the individual face shield components, and track requests. Eventually myself, Dan, and Ryan settled on the Prusa design, as it felt the most durable, reusable, and comfortable after wearing them around the house for a couple hours. The USA version of the headband utilized three pins to secure the face shield to the headband instead of four, as this made replacing the shield part of the face shield much easier to do in the field.
Helping Friends, Funding
In addition to Ryan’s wife, several of our friends or their spouses were working on the front lines of the pandemic in hospitals. Once we heard about their having to work with a lack of protective equipment, the situation felt personal, and the need to take action escalated. On Saturday March 28, Dan created a gofundme to help grow our capacity to produce face shields. As the fundraiser took off, he picked up 4 new Ender 3 3D printers, and a dozen rolls of filament. I volunteered to operate two of the new printers in addition to my large format D Bot, while Dan kept 1 in addition to his existing printers, and our friend Ryan took the fourth.
Not to be understated were the shopping conditions. At this point in time many stores were evolving their social distancing policies, which included curbside pickup. The trip to Microcenter for Dan involved placing the order online, driving to the store and waiting in a queue in his car for 3 hours, as employees fetched orders for customers one at a time. Believe it or not, this is the easiest getting our hands on 3D printing supplies would be for weeks.
The GoFundMe link:
The gofundme hit $1000 in a single day, which was enough to pay for the current batch of printers, filament, elastic, and plastic sheets. Sharing on social media had been great at getting the word out for donations, finding people who needed the face shields, and letting people in our social networks know there were people out there helping.
Several local maker groups cropped up in this time, each coordinating people like myself with hobby 3d printers to pool resources, set up collection points, take order requests, and distribute 3d printed supplies to hospitals and other health care workers. Considering that we personally had people that we knew in need of PPE, as well as not agreeing with the headband designs many of these groups were centered around, we felt it was best to retain our independence and support our friends and families directly.
I spent the week iterating my headband printing process, leveraging my years of tinkering experience to push the printers to their limit to produce quality parts as quickly as possible. It was during this week that I researched and planned my Ender 3 upgrades for the E3D V6 Hot End, Filament Run Out Sensor, and flashing Marlin firmware (see my other blog posts on these topics).
Supply Scarcity
The above video shows my basement workbench setup as of April 4 2020. The workbench served me very well while I was playing with my large printer, and working on other various side projects, but now that I was running 3 printers around the clock, it was time to consider moving them to a new home. This was the day I decided on a date to install French Cleats in my garage, and move my printer workstations out of the house. Luckily I had anticipated this project, and had procured supplies before the shelter in place order had come out.
Supplies were still coming in for elastic and face shields, so our focus was on printing. This was the weekend where I observed retail stocks of PPE supplies were exhausted. Ryan had contacted a local office supply store and acquired a sizeable donation of overhead projector sheets to use, and those were probably most of what was left in Southeast Michigan. Elastic was nowhere to be found in any quantity either, as it was used for sewn face masks as well as 3d printed face shields. Surprisingly online retailers were likewise out of stock, which I took to mean that anyone who was able to help out was doing everything they could to do so.
Two Weeks In
The story so far has included friends and family looking out for each other, doing some research to find a niche we can use to help, and applying our 3d printing skills in a new direction. It was definitely an eventful two weeks, ending on April 4, and I look forward to sharing more in coming posts.
