Helping out on the lack of PPE for frontline health workers

by: Kelvin Griffiths  CEng BEng(Hons) MIOA, Electroacoustic Design Limited

In the past weeks a news item that has been prominent is the lack of PPE for frontline health workers. 

I was recently contacted about this from a friend in our local 3D printing community who advised that there are currently initiatives afoot to help this sector in supplying face shields.  Aiming to directly supply PPE in the shorter term, the idea is to communicate the need and immediately utilise available 3D printing resources to build components of face shields which will be worn by at risk health workers.  Anyone with a 3D printer can make a valuable contribution. 

A standard face mask has been identified and the necessary input data for the printer created, leaving only the task of production to the community.

3DCrowd is the crowd funding group who can provide information on local distribution and joining this group will help them track the numbers.

https://www.3dcrowd.uk/

Printing details and files of the face shield are here, version RC3 is the latest at the time of writing:

https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/25857-prusa-protective-face-shield-rc3

Parts that Electroacoustic Design have printed have been assembled and added to an overall donation that have been sent a number of UK ambulance services, medical centres and hospitals and clearly demand will remain high until mass produced shields are delivered where needed.

If you have a 3D printer and can donate to this urgent need, please join this community and make a difference by following the above links.  Additionally, just letting people know this is happening can unlock significant untapped production resource and recent experience has shown that people are more than willing to help where they can.