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JCRMRG’s 3D Health Hackathon Aims for Sustainable 3D Printed PPE

As we’ve mentioned many, many times over the last few months, the 3D printing community has really stepped up in a big way to help others as our world got turned upside down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The crisis hasn’t passed either, and makers are still offering their support in any way they can.

We’ve been telling you about all of the virtual events and webinars taking place in the industry as we struggle to remain connected, including a virtual nationwide 3D Health Hackathon, hosted by the United Way-sponsored Jersey City Rapid Maker Response Group (JCRMRG) and sponsored by several industry partners, including 3DPrint.com.

This all-volunteer collective has an interesting back story. JCRMRG was just formed in April, as the result of a Reddit post regarding personal protective equipment, or PPE. The post was a call to arms for 3D printing hobbyists to organize, in order to create and deliver face shields for medical workers and first responders in New Jersey and New York.

JCRMRG volunteers delivering face shields to hospitals

“I’m creating the jersey city rapid maker response group. calling all local makers and professionals with 3dprinters, laser cutters, etc, to come volunteer remotely…together. It’s time for us to get organized and help supply our local healthcare workers more efficiently, as a group,” the post states.

“if we band together, we will be able to get much more efficient at our production and distribution, and will be able to supply larger numbers to needed places quickly, addressing local needs in a smarter way.”

Since then, the group has engaged over 50 volunteers, responsible for 3D printing 5,000 face shields. JCRMRG has since switched to injection molding, and more than 75,000 face shields have been delivered to healthcare workers all around the US. Now it’s raising the bar with the virtual hackathon, which aims to take on PPE-related wearability, sustainability, and supply chain issues.

“Our goal is to be responsible partners in the eco-system that we are currently a part of, while acting as a catalyst for innovation, and we are the only all volunteer PPE group in the country doing an event like this. We want to pay it forward, and enable our hackers to walk away with enough feedback and support to launch their own successful ventures that can continue to support the battle against COVID, and combat supply chain disruption through maker-led initiatives,” said JCRMRG’s founder Justin Handsman.

JCRMRG’s Laura Sankowich told me that as of now, 25 hackathon teams from around the country have signed up, and the event will kick off at 6 pm on July 10th with a Zoom call between the panelists and judges. Initial design ideas will be presented in one of three categories — sustainable PPE, modular solution labs, and day-to-day PPE — and then the hacking will begin.

“The Jersey City Rapid Maker Response Group is making a huge impact on a local and national level. First by providing PPE to frontline medical workers, and second by engaging people to think about how we can empower the maker movement to continue to address both COVID and future crisis related challenges. As a co-host and advisor of the event, and leader of a tech organization with more than 2,500 members, I am confident that the hackathon will have a positive, long-term impact in terms of the ideas, and potential businesses it will produce,” stated Ben Yurcisin, Founder of the Jersey City Tech Meetup, who is also serving as the event advisor.

A JCRMRG volunteer set his system to 3D print 40 face shield visors at once.

From July 11-12, teams will work on their projects, whether they’re designing PPE for daily use in schools, business, and public transportation, figuring out ways to reduce waste in the PPE production process, or developing mobile manufacturing labs that can be deployed quickly and easily in healthcare, emergent, and even educational settings. Teams of experienced mentors will support the hackers, offering support and coaching, as well as advice on design and functionality capabilities and creating value propositions for their ideas.

“This hackathon represents the next phase in our mission to use technology for humanitarian causes. Our hackathon is bringing together the brightest minds and leaders in technology, business, and additive manufacturing to help participating teams develop solutions to address the ongoing needs surrounding supply chain disruptions in healthcare and emergent situations,” Handsman said. “We are also focused on encouraging the development of safe, sustainable solutions related to the manufacturing and use of PPE since millions of face shields, masks, and pieces of protective gear are ending up in landfills across the country after a single use.”

In addition to Handsman, there are eight other Hackathon judges:

Michael Burghoffer, Founder and CEO of PicoSolutions
Alda Leu Dennis, General Partner at early stage VC firm Initialized Capital
Christopher Frangione, COO of TechUnited:NJ
Thomas Murphy, Sr. Product Manager at Shapeways
Rob Rinderman, SCORE Mentor, Founder, Investor
Tali Rosman, General Manager and Vice President of 3D Printing, Xerox
Nora Toure, Founder of Women in 3D Printing
Dr. David Zimmerman, Stevens Venture Center, Director of Technology Commercialization, Stevens Institute of Technology

A variant of the open-source Prusa face shield, modified and produced by JCRMRG

The winning hacks will be announced on July 16th. The third place team will receive $1,500, while second place will get $2,500, and first place is $3,500. Several strategic partners and sponsors are supporting the hackathon, including 3DPrint.com, Asimov Ventures, DesignPoint, Indiegrove, PicoSolutions, Dassault Systèmes, PSE&G, PrusaPrinters, TechUnited, Stevens Venture Center, Devpost, Women in 3D Printing, and the Jersey City Tech Meetup.

Once the hackathon is over, JCRMRG plans to follow and support the teams, as well as the maker community, by connecting makers with resources and mentors, and coming up with more initiatives to use 3D printing and injection molding to make face shields for the brave men and women working on the front lines of the pandemic in the US.

JCRMRG donated 875 face shields to Zufall Health Center in New Jersey

(Source/Images: Jersey City Rapid Maker Response Group)

The post JCRMRG’s 3D Health Hackathon Aims for Sustainable 3D Printed PPE appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.

Metaform Architects creates customisable face shields for children

Metaform architects children face shield coronavirus daily briefing col

Fun concept + execution from Metaform Architects, recently featured on Dezeen.

Designed for children aged four to eight years old, the face shield includes studs to secure personalised adornments such as crowns, animal ears or googley eyes.

A 3D-printed plastic frame is designed to fit over a child’s hat to hold a PVC shield in front of their face.

3D Printing for COVID-19, Part Five: Face Shields and Masks

As a hospitalist mentioned in a previous post on the efforts of 3D printing companies to address the coronavirus outbreak, some 3D-printed parts may be safer and easier to deploy. 3D-printed valves and respirator parts require greater safety considerations “due to the risk of contagion,” something that may be more easily adhered to by companies with greater resources that are participating in the support effort. However, the doctor suggested that “3D-printed face shields […] will definitely be needed.”

Face Shields

Palestenian-Canadian emergency physician Dr. Tarek Loubani has been an important actor in the use of 3D printing for emergency response. Dr. Loubani first developed 3D-printed stethoscopes for deployment in Gaza to circumvent the Israeli blockade of the Palestenian land. Not only could the stethoscopes be printed for $0.30, compared to $200 for traditional counterparts, but they could be made using open source RepRap printers built within Gaza.

Dr. Loubani has continued to develop printable emergency supplies, including a tourniquet that was used during the Palestenian Nakba protests that began in 2018. Most recently, he has supplied his skills to the fight against the COVID-19 outbreak by creating a modification of a face mask that is being used in the Emergency Department of the London Health Sciences Centre in Canada.

A face mask 3D printed by Dr. Tarek Loubani. Image courtesy of Tarek Loubani.

The face shield is made up of a mount, printed on a desktop plastic extrusion machine, to which a mylar sheet and elastic band can be attached. The device protects medical staff that might be exposed to air particles that spread the coronavirus. As of March 19, 2020, Loubani had printed and assembled 200 masks. Since then, numerous other parties have developed and printed their own versions of 3D printable face shield holders.

Among those who are assembling similar face shields using 3D-printed parts are HP, Ford, Stratasys, Carbon and Alphabet (Google’s parent company). Ford is aiming to produce 100,000 face shields weekly and is testing 1,000 shields at several hospitals in Michigan. HP is in the process of finalizing designs for a face mask adjuster and face shield brackets and has already produced over 1,000 parts for hospitals to use. With Alphabet subsidiary Verily, which is developing the COVID-19 online screening software Project Baseline, Carbon has designed and printed a face shield bracket that is already being tested at Stanford Hospital and with Kaiser Permanente.

Notably, smaller companies are now supplying face shields for medical workers. Budmen Industries, in Pennsylvania, has suspended all sales and production operations as it deploys all of its desktop 3D printers to manufacture face shields for local hospitals.

Spanish 3D printer manufacturer BCN3D has used its farm of 63 machines to print parts to assemble 400 masks for over 10 local hospitals, with plans to make 2,000 more in the coming days. BCN3D’s masks have met the safety criteria according to the hospital’s needs, which means that they can be reused after disinfection. The company is part of a larger group of Spanish parties, dubbed 3DCovid19.tech, which is working to address medical supply shortages in the region. We will cover this coalition and others in an upcoming article.

3D printing startup Origin is also attempting to contribute to the effort throughout the design of face shields with 3D-printed parts and a “hospital-grade” N95 filter attachment. A transparency film from a three-hole punch binder is being tested as a possible disposable frontal shield. They are currently being tested by the Stanford University School of Medicine. The company is hoping to make the device ANSI z87.1 compliant. Other parts being designed and tested include test swabs and sterilizable respirator components.

Face Masks and Respirators

While the safety issues associated with a simple visor are most likely easier to overcome, some firms are designing 3D printable masks and respirators whose safety is much more questionable. Italy’s WASP, for instance, has developed a customizable facemask that is meant to be 3D printed out of biocompatible polycaprolactone (PCL) material with a replaceable filter. The mask is meant to be tailored to the wearer’s face using smartphone photogrammetry.

Additionally, the company has designed a helmet with “positive air flow protection”, in which fresh air is carried in through the top of the mask and a fan powered by a 12V battery circulates the air. Both devices are being used internally at the moment and are not certified, but their files are open source and instructions to create them are available online.

Similarly, filament manufacturer Copper3D has developed a 3D printable face mask meant to fill the need for N95 masks currently in short supply. The open source and 3D printable NanoHack mask can be printed in about two hours. Most importantly, it is meant to be 3D printed using the firm’s copper filament, due to the fact that copper has been considered an effective material for killing bacteria and viruses, including a precursor to COVID-19, coronavirus 229E. Chile’s Copper3D, in particular, focuses on an antimicrobial filament that is an FDA Registered Material and EU compliant (No. 10/2011, No. 1935/2004 and No. 2023/2006).

Many of WASP’s projects have focused on genuinely benevolent causes, such as providing housing to the homeless and working with sustainable materials. Fortunately, the company is not yet deploying its devices in a clinical setting because their safety would have to be validated before getting put into use. As our ER doctor mentioned in a previous article, “the shape, texture and porosity of the materials used are important, so we would probably only use a 3D-printed version that has been tested and proven to be equally effective and safe.”

Of course, the ongoing pandemic is creating many emergency scenarios globally, so some protection could be useful when none are available. However, if 3D printable face masks with invisible pores and questionable strength are being used, they could potentially act as harbingers of disease. Even cleaning with alcohol, soap and water may not be able to kill the germs within these pores. One can imagine medical staff printing masks without knowing these facts about 3D-printed parts and carrying the disease.

The post 3D Printing for COVID-19, Part Five: Face Shields and Masks appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.