CGS 3D PRINTERS USED FOR COVID-19
Imade, showedandhershetheasked first ifshield I she could take it to show her colleagues who thought it was a great idea and asked if I could make more.
We are so proud of CGS staff member Julian Visser who discovered our school’s 3D printers are able to print face shields for doctors and nurses on the frontline. Julian has taken the printers home and has printed over 2,000 face shields – 700 made with the school’s printers and the rest sourced through community volunteers which was other schools, businesses and individuals through their ‘Protect our Frontline’ initiative, which is now discontinued since supply has begun to stabilise. The shields provided helped keep medical staff safe during a period
where it was very difficult to source most types of PPE. During this process Julian got invaluable feedback from medical workers about how the design could be improved. They went through several design iterations and have spent the last 5-6 weeks getting tools created for injection moulding in Dandenong to increase production to one shield every few seconds. They will be supplying the Victorian government medical stockpile with 35,000 units of the new face shield design over the coming weeks. This would have not been possible without the ability to rapidly prototype designs using the 3D printers to test that the design is viable as changing the design after creating injection moulding tools is a very expensive exercise.
1. How did you come across the idea to use CGS printers to print the shields? I follow a lot of technology communities and noticed there was a large movement growing in response to COVID-19 shortages globally of PPE for medical personnel. In particular the company that makes the school’s 3D printers Prusa was leading a global effort to use idle 3D printers to create face shields. They released a design as open source so anyone can download and print the shields free of charge. You can find out more information here.
Find more information here
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Spectemur | Issue 2 - 2020
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