Hi All
Hope all are well and you are having a good garage/garden day. I know also that some on here are frontline workers so if you off today then its well deserved and a huge thanks for all you are doing.

As we are all makers here in one form or another I wanted to make sure that everyone is aware

3dcrowd

and see if you can help in any way.

I'm currently printing parts for it, there are about 5500+ people involved now but the latest news suggests there has been 340,000 visors requested so far. Although the NHS hasn't approved the mask we make, because it has to go through all kinds of regulatory tests, front line works are still requesting them as they battle to get PPE to protect themselves in these difficult times.

So if you have a rapid prototyping machine and filament then please help if you can, if not then please donate if you can but I appreciate that for some this is also a challenging time financially.


Cheers all, keep safe.

Pete

I was really interested in this, but it seemed like the qty's expected were in excess of my capabilities.

I downloaded the file and cura predicted a 5-6 hour print time. The expectation was 20 over the weekend gone and there was no way i could have provided that kind of qty.

Ironically my 3d printer is at work (GP practice) and I can't use it because I'm self-isolating with symptoms! Got my test tomorrow. Certainly if I come back negative I'm going to start printing masks. Last week (prior to going off sick) I've been printing hands-free door handles to avoid handle contamination.

Yeah print times can be long on this stuff I'm running PLA on a sidewinder X1 and get 3 on the bed and that takes about 5 hours so i have got 20 done just but i had to run overnight. They did get agreement from DPD (who are doing free pickup) to relax the rules and only send 10 so that helped a lot of people.
Pete

CNC kitchen on youtube did an interesting piece by which he significantly reduced the print time on some visors.

Instead of visors I've started printing head straps for surgical masks

It is used to hold the elastic straps of a surgical mask, to relieve the pressure of those on the ears. Apparently wearing a surgical mask all day can be hard on the ears.


Description

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4249113?fbclid=IwAR1PNH3SVQ84_UcMGpphq69xyfSy4PfOSj0kywn17vyH1AtMQ0hYskEpoM4

well done to anyone helping out with this.

wife works in an acute hospital and as of this week has started to see ppe finally arriving and a change in guidance. I can only assume the guidance didn't come in sooner because they didn't have the kit in place, which is upsetting and infuriating in equal measure.

it is now on the wards but by no means universally. they were asked to go to one ward to see a patient only to find that there were no masks, so staff refused to treat (these are wards with confirmed cases)

anything you can do to supply more is brilliant. thank you

Still nothing near adequate ppe around. I went today to be tested (hopefully back to work Friday if negative). The bloke doing the testing in my lane (1 of 4 in the Ikea car park) was doing one swab a minute. So 8 hour shift that's potentially just shy of 500 suspected people he was having to swab by sticking a swab up the nose and back of throat (which had obvious effects in someone struggling not to cough). PPE in use? Surgical face mask and diy style goggles.

And he described himself as a volunteer.

Otherwise it was set up well but for goodness sake. PPE!

Although clearly our PM doesn't know the benefits of wearing protection....

I'm just about to start something new to keep me busy while socially isolating...

My three 3D printers are now set up and ready for making PPE visor frames, as soon as 3 rolls of new unopened filament are delivered to me. This is being organised in the next village by Andy Proctor, who is assembling the complete visors and and organising their delivery to local care homes. So far they've shipped out about 100 visors, and a lot more will be produced soon when fresh materials arrive.

More details of the design can be found in the link above: it was designed in Sweden and is now being made around the world by people like me. It's not the most sophisticated design, but it's very simple to make, light to wear, easy to clean, reusable, and uses cheap and readily available materials - and it's much better than nothing, or poor improvisations. They're not up to NHS standards of sterility, but they will be disinfected before being shipped out.

Apparently, during their deliveries, they found one care home that had been using plastic pockets and elastic bands as visors, because they simply couldn't get any through official channels.

Frames they've made so far:

frrame stack

And one in use:

frame in use

[Edited on 8/4/20 by David Jenkins]

Hi David
looks like thats the 3dverkstan design which is really nice and quick to print <30mins. With a stacked version you can leave it making loads day and night.
3d crowd went down the Prusa rc3 route and they take a long time to print, i got mine to 1hr 40mins so it took me all weekend to do 20 including nights and they also need a lot of filament and the design isnt that great to print.

The 3dcrowd is now changing to local so i'm hoping that we may change direction on the model to print as the prusa one is a pain.



good luck with the printing.

I don't think anyone is choosy about the design. We've had people contacting us directly and any stuff like that gets snapped up. A local dry cleaners has even offerered to make us up some scrubs as they're in short supply. Saves me making them on my hand cranked Singer!

You guys with these 3d printers, well done, if I had one I wold be doing the same

clap clap clap clap

quote:

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Originally posted by steve m
You guys with these 3d printers, well done, if I had one I wold be doing the same

clap clap clap clap

---

We've now shipped out a total of over 300 visors, with another 50+ frames ready for assembly. The guy who's organising the local effort has even appeared on our regional news! (Look East).

It's the stories associated with all this that get to me: care home staff in tears of gratitude when they receive their visors, someone driving from Thetford to south of Ipswich to get components so that they can make their own visors for police officers, visors going to people responsible for the welfare of homeless people, members of Essex police receiving visors, ambulence crews and paramedics... the list goes on and on.

These are all 'the other people' who need PPE but haven't been included in official distributions - or can no longer afford them because the price has risen so much lately and their normal PPE budget is nowhere large enough.