Over the last few weeks, COVID-19 has spread all over the world, infecting hundreds of thousands of people and collapsing the health system. There is a huge shortage in medical equipment, both for treating patients and for protecting workers. Factories simply cannot meet the production demands and people are dying as a result.
3D printing has helped to solve this issue. Anyone who has a desktop 3D printer is able to download a CAD file of a face shield, print them from their homes and send them to the hospitals. A printer can make roughly one shield per hour, so let’s say it makes 8 per day. Since hundreds of people are doing this, the amount of help they are providing is huge.
Engineers have been working hard and thinking about ways to improve the situation, coming up with alternative solutions to some of the issues. For example, in Italy crucial valves for ventilators have been reverse engineered and made by startup Issinova. As they couldn't obtain the 3D models of the part, the company reverse engineered its structure and was able to 3D print the first prototype within six hours using a filament extrusion system.
Seeing the pain doctors and nurses are suffering on face and ears caused by the face masks, Chinese 3D-printer manufacturer Creality is fabricating thousands of buckles that make face masks less painful to wear for medical workers treating coronavirus patients. Small bars on either side of the plastic buckle hold the elastic taut behind the mask-wearer's head, so that it doesn't put painful pressure on their ears.
Architectural designers have created a 3D-printed door handle that lets people open doors with their arms rather than their hands to help stop the spread of the virus.
Everyone is doing their part and helping the best way they can. And thanks to 3D printers, they can develop these designs and share them with other people, manufacturing them quickly and being able to help others. That is what makes 3D printing so great, being accessible to everyone. What good is technology if it’s limited to just a few?
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