CGS 3D Printers used for COVID-19

I showed her the first shield I made, and she asked if 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.

2. How long does it take to print a shield?

When I started printing it took about four hours per shield. Now that I’ve made configuration changes to the printers the time is down to around 1 hour and 30 minutes per shield. There are designs out there that print faster however feedback from the hospitals we are working with was that they didn’t provide adequate protection.

3. What materials do you need to create them?

There are three parts to the shield:

The frame which is 3D printed out of PLA A clear piece of plastic to attach to the frame (A4 laminate) An elastic strap to secure the shield to your head.

At the moment we are supplying the 3D printed frames and the hospitals are supplying the rest.

4. How did you make contact with the medical team that are now using the shields?

Through a friend of mine Dr Ivy Fan who is a doctor at Western Health. I showed her the first shield I made, and she asked if she could take it to show her colleagues who thought it was a great idea and asked if I could make more.

5. Do you know how many are needed in total for the teams you’re supplying to?

I’ve made about 300 now, there is a large demand out there we have been asked if we can supply around 8,000 at the moment. We cannot do that alone so we have set up a network for schools, businesses and individuals with idle 3D printers that wish to help.