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3D-PRINTING ON THE FRONT OF THE COVID-19

Updated: Jan 11, 2022

Is it possible to make 758 face shields a day with one printer?

It is a fascinating time for the 3D-Printing community, it is exciting to see all types of 3D-Printing technologies, especially desktop 3D-Printing (FDM), facing the COVID-19 challenges, providing immediate response to critical products shortages.

This phenomenon reinforces the need for local manufacturing in general and the 3D-Printing in particular, we can see today how 3D-Printing can respond to extreme situations like epidemic or disaster, while other manufacturers are paralyzed. Only in the Israel Masks4Docs community, over 16,000 new face protectors have been created, a group of HIT students together with TOM-Tikkun Olam Makers produced about 3,000 units in two weeks, and there are many more examples of products and groups that are collaborating on the same effort.

Over three last years I focus on research and development on FLEXIMATTER's Fused Granulate Fabrication (FGF) technology that enables large-scale printing, FGF is the big brother of the commonly used FDM. One of the advantages of FGF is the use of granulate plastic instead of the filament, which are available in a wide variety of materials in industrial standards (flame retardants, UV resistance, etc), the cost of the material is one-tenth of the filament spool, the difference is dramatic for manufacturing large models. But the most significant difference is the printing speed, the printer prints 20 times faster than FDM in the case presented here and in some cases 50 times and even more. The printer uses a large extruder system and can print a 1Kg of raw material per hour (think how long it takes to finish a 1Kg spool - not including COVID-19 days .

For easy comparison, let's take the face shields that are manufactured in the thousands around the world today, the shield is suitable for a good comparison, is relatively large for home printers and relatively small for the large printer.

After examining with dozens of makers in the Israeli Masks4Docs group of about eight hundred printers around the country, home printers are capable of producing a face shield between 50 min for novice 23 minutes for advanced users with high-quality 3D-Printer. After a few exams on the big printer without reaching optimal parameters, we produced a face shield in 115 seconds! Less than two minutes per unit, which allows producing about 32 units per hour, and 758 units in 24 hours compared to 62 units in FDM, this completely game-changer, providing high-speed 3D-Printing for medium scale products.

Such a production capability can address various needs and challenges in disasters and epidemics where an immediate need for different equipment is created. Beyond the ability to respond to emergencies, due to the low production cost and machine cost compared to other printing technologies, it is approaching mass production capacity and very suitable for small series production.