As countries around the world scramble to manage the coronavirus pandemic,
makers at all levels are donating their time and printers to the cause.
Here's how you can too.
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is slowly but surely affecting all aspects of daily life. For many countries, this means closed borders, social distancing, and the closure of places of work, worship, and recreation.
Parallel to the disturbance to public life, is the chaos wreaked on healthcare services by the increased number of patients admitted to overburdened hospitals. Often requiring a particular type of ventilator for life-support – Covid-19 is a respiratory virus – the sudden spike in demand for these machines has stretched supply chains and the hospitals using them to breaking point.
Here are the ways 3D printing and the ingenuity of those that use it could, and in some cases already have, assist during the Covid-19 crisis.
Italian Hospital Uses 3D Printed Oxygen Valves
Isinnova CEO Cristian Fracassi and mechanical engineer Alessandro Romaioli with the SLS replacement valves (Source: BBC)
A hospital in Brescia, Italy, one of the worst-afflicted regions in Europe, has had to operate over-capacity with some 250 patients in intensive care. With each case requiring long hours of assisted breathing using a ventilator, a shortage of oxygen valves quickly became a problem.
Upon discovering the issue, Nunzia Vallini, Italian journalist and director of magazine Giornale di Brescia, connected the hospital with Isinnova, a business research and development firm that quickly made it to the hospital to inspect the valve.
Modeling the part onsite, a rough replacement was produced and in testing within 24 hours. Following initial success, some 70 more were produced with the assistance of engineers at Brescia-based industrial manufacturer, the Lonati Group.
The valves, batch produced using selective laser sintering technology, are said to be in use already, aiding the intensive care of patients fighting the virus.
A “quick and dirty” fix in a time of crisis, it demonstrates the radical agility 3D printing technology can bring to a supply chain. It’s perhaps too early to say whether stories such as Brescia will be fringe cases, or if flashpoints of the virus will make this a regular thing.
Commit Printing Time and Expertise
In response to the Brescia story, a Google Sheet has been set up for makers the world over to provide basic details about their availability and capability to make such devices as the oxygen valve.
As the Covid-19 crisis deepens, such a resource could serve as a shortcut for under-pressure medical institutions in dire need of small-scale manufacturing help.
Those interested in signing up can do so via the submission form. Take note that this is a publicly available document. Your email address, name, and general location will be there for all to see, so make sure you are comfortable with this information becoming public knowledge.
Design an Open Source Ventilator
Further than committing printing time and materials, several open-source projects have emerged in recent days with the singular goal of developing ventilators that can be produced cheaply and locally.
Several posts covering the concept of an open-source ventilator have given wind to the idea that a crowdsourced response, channeling the kind of energy typically reserved for hackathons, could be instrumental in helping areas stricken by a spike of Covid-19 cases.
Thanks to Brent Jackson of the OpenRespirator Project, who has compiled a list in his GitHub repo, we currently know of the OpenRespirator Project, Project Open Air, and the Open Lung Low Resource Ambu-Bag Ventilator.
Scaling Up to Print Safety Goggles
An unnamed safety equipment manufacturer in Jinhua, China, is tackling the personal protective equipment (PPE) shortage head-on, tasking its farm of 200 Flashforge Guider 2 3D printers to produce safety goggles for frontline medical staff.
Tasking its R&D team to develop a 3D printable, mass-producible product, the company managed to finalize the goggles in a little under two weeks, a design that will result in the ability to tool up to print some 2,000 goggles daily. According to the release on Business Wire, to date, some 5,000 3D printed googles have already been donated to hospitals.
Materialise Designs Hands-Free Door Handle
Belgian 3D printing bureau Materialise quickly put its inhouse design talent to use during the Covid-19 crisis, designing a bolt-on door hack to make simple lever door handles hands-free.
A smart move that eliminates contact with a common transmission object at home, in public and even hospitals, the design simplifies the elbow-action we’ve all near perfected in recent weeks.
Available to download for free, the two-part print requires two long and two short screws, plus four nuts to secure them all in place. Don’t forget to print one for each side of the door.
Click here to watch the video on YouTube: Hands-Free 3D-Printed Door Opener to Help Against the Spread of Coronavirus
Safety & Legality
Of course, for some of these 3D printed parts used in medical devices, there’s the question of whether they’re as safe as their non-3D printed, manufacturer-approved counterparts and whether there could be any potential legal implications for jerry-rigging these life-saving devices.
Despite the success of cases like the one in Brescia, Italy and the Google sheet organizing makers’ time and resources to help, the reality is these printed parts are hugely untested. They likely could be outside of the tolerances for the machines they are paired with and will not be up to the clinical standard of production. That people’s lives hinge on the effectiveness of this printed part highlights how desperate the situation is for the communities at the heart of the pandemic.
And the legal complications of unofficially mass-producing patented parts, and who is liable should one of these printed parts fail in the care of an immunocompromised patient, are also worth giving some thought to.
Regardless, the desperate situations of cities caught in the midst of this crisis have inspired makers around the world to commit their time and machines to the cause. If you find yourself in the situation to help, try to do so responsibly.
Source:
https://all3dp.com/1/coronavirus-covid-19-sars-cov-2-3d-printing/?fbclid=IwAR1E2hq6OctfHxnzSXGOE7c9njZLPxS3g5Ky0KdS0fQh-92ojTPtFhg37fQ
(If you find any of our articles and/or pictures are infringing your intellectual property, copyrights and/or other rights, please contact us directly and we will verify your appeal, if your appeal is confirmed, we will delete the infringement articles and/or pictures immediately. )