Caracol-AM, a 3D printing provider in Italy, is manufacturing face shields and masks using both its proprietary extrusion system mounted on a KUKA industrial robotic arm and more traditional fused deposition modeling printers. According to KUKA, the company is producing 1,000 parts daily for use by local healthcare workers.

America Makes has announced the winners of its Fit to Face – Mask Design Challenge, hosted with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The designs had to meet the requirements of five head form datasets shared by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), before being judged on manufacturability, assembly and instruction. The top designs were the “Vader Small Mask” from Alliance PCB Solutions and “Moldable Mask Small and Moldable Mask Large” from Carnegie Mellon University, which will be hosted on the NIH 3D Print Exchange and America Makes websites. Honorable mentions for the challenge were the “Every Mask” from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the “Flex Fit Small and Flex Fit Large” from Re:3D.

Seattle Children’s has 3D printed clips for its supply of Controlled Air Purifying Respirator helmets. The hospital’s Chief Procurement Officer, Greg Beach, along with its Clinical Engineering team feared a shortage of clips necessary to secure face shields to their CAPR helmets. The Radiology department relied on a CT machine to scan existing clips, before Friedman used Materialise’s Mimics Medical & 3-matic Medical software to reverse engineer them. Using an in-house 3D printer, the hospital was able to fabricate the parts and determine that they fit. Stratasys then offered to print batches of the tools using its V650 Flex stereolithography 3D printer.

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