What is the point of 3d printing something that clearly needs to be mass-produced in great quantities? Maybe it "feels good", but it's just too slow.
I'm honestly not sure why people don't just use plastic food wrap as a cheap improvised alternative for face shields. It's lightweight, readily available, disposable, fits over any attire and does not restrict visibility.
As someone working with my maker space to deliver 3,500 shields a week to our local health organizations, I can confirm we do all in fact feel good for being able to play our small part. Helping people feels amazing, I'd recommend it to anyone!
Because it turns out you actually can 3D print some of these in mass quantities. Some of the printers we are working with right now are producing on the order of 10s of thousands of parts per day. And now, there are tool shops in the US right now cutting injection molds to make those parts in the hundreds of thousands of parts per day.
But for an equal amount of effort, raws and manpower you could get much more out of traditional manufacturing, much quicker.
The product is a very simple stamp, with very simple dies with little wasted material. Perfect for traditional production methods.
It's great people with machines are contributing to the effort, and empowering/informing individuals to be able to do so as well. But it's just done simpler traditionally.
This is all great in theory, but in reality there are hundreds of thousands of these parts being delivered to hospitals right now, and they came from lots of people with lots of 3D printers at their houses, hackerspaces, and printer farms.
We can definitely talk about what would have been better and more efficient, but in the meantime people need this stuff today.
It makes tons of sense for people with 3d printers to print as many as they can now because they can get them in the hands of people now. But once dedicated manufacturing comes online, that capability is going to be quickly become irrelevant.
The comment I replied to seemed to suggest individuals were printing 10s of thousands of these per day which is clearly not true. Thousands of individuals are printing a few each day which is vastly different.
> But once dedicated manufacturing comes online, that capability is going to be quickly become irrelevant.
You're right, but after this emergency all those production lines will be retooled to things that are more profitable.
The upside is that this pandemic has basically created a grass roots production network to fill gaps that will always exist in traditional manufacturing.
If the next world-wide issue can be at least partially mitigated by small plastic parts, that gap will again be filled by 3d printers, and we're all better off for it.
My "argument" was in response to the parent comment saying 3D Manufacturing can 'scale'. Which it certainly can, just not as simply or efficiently as traditional methods. Especially in this case with such a simple part.
I didn't intend to impinge on the people helping hospitals or people with faceshields now via 3D manufacturing hence the 'It's good...' part. Rather simply comment on scaling up manufacturing methods.
> But for an equal amount of effort, raws and manpower you could get much more out of traditional manufacturing, much quicker.
The set of people who have 3D Printers at home, and the set of people with access to large-scale injection-moulding facilities (along with tool production) likely have a very small overlap.
I imagine those that do have access to those facilities were already trying to make those tools (assuming they wern't already occupied with other more urgent tasks). It just takes longer for them to scale up, and there's fewer of them in a smaller number of locations.
These 3d printed ones are being delivered and used in hospitals in my area. Not sure in what quantity, but I'm sure they'd love traditional made ones too. If only it was being provided. So what you say isn't wrong in theory, but we're not dealing with an ideal situation in the first place.
Actually Prusa has a print farm with hundreds of printers or more normally used to print parts for their printers. But they possess significant manufacturing capability in their in house print farm, plus laser cutters for face shields and QA/shipping supplies. I don’t see why they wouldn’t use their substantial capacity to support COVID relief.
The point is: A lot of folks own a 3d printer and they are local. I can produce ~50 shields per day, that means I can supply shields to around 5 to 10 doctor's offices per day. My suburb in the city seems to have a few dozen doctors. Also if they can have a shield tomorrow, that is better than a shield in 2 weeks.
This can be a supplement until the original supply chains are up to speed and the doctor's can get the real equipment through official channels.
>It's really hard to breathe through food wrap and it doesn't cling to hair well.
You wrap it around the top of your head (forehead level), so it sticks to itself. You keeps the bottom part loose, so it doesn't restrict breathing. It works.
I think there's a pre-assembled version of this, it's called "a plastic bag", and most people know not to stick their head in one. Please don't encourage dangerous behavior.
> You wrap it around the top of your head (forehead level), so it sticks to itself. You keeps the bottom part loose, so it doesn't restrict breathing. It works.
Sorry, does your version of HN not display the comments you've previously written? Or does your dictionary have different definitions for the words "it" and "works"?
I don't like arguing with strangers on the internet, so I think we should probably just end this conversation, but in the future I hope you'll be more considerate before advocating for harmful techniques. Hope you're staying safe and doing alright in these strange times.
3d printing is probably less effective than manufacturing at scale, but it has much lower setup time and overhead cost. Not to mention, this escalated demand for masks and face shields is going to be very short - 1 or 2 years at most. Setting up a whole factory to fulfill only a year or two of demand is not effective. By comparison, you can use your 3d printer for other stuff after the pandemic is over.
There are factories that specialize in small batches. Just some quick searching seemed to suggest that you could be getting O(1000) parts a day at a cost of a few thousand dollars (for the initial setup) plus a few dollars a part [1]. I'd imagine that the lead time is a few weeks rather than days, but if there's already a stable design wouldn't this be the best bet?
Every little bit helps, and being able to desk-produce these means that you can make an impact directly and quickly. My parents are both still treating patients, and I was able to print 25+ masks for their practice.
While we're waiting for mass production to step up, these local productions make a difference now.
It just has a faster start. Here in Portugal people have been printing 3D face shield for 2 weeks (or more probably) and delivering them to those who need it.
In the meantime injection mold factories started creating the mold, fine tuning it and are now producing in large quantities.
But you see, for 2 weeks (or more) the big factories had 0 face shields coming out, which matters a lot.
People on the field don't need great and efficient solutions 2 weeks down the line, they need good enough solutions NOW.
I don't understand how the comment can have upvotes. "feels good"? Really? People with 3D printers are making a difference and actually helping those in the field. From health staff, to law enforcement to other areas. Shame on you.
These kinds of parts can actually be mass produced. You could probably make 3500 face shields in less than a week with 10 printers. The mass produced Prusa i3 printers actually use quite a few 3D printed parts, and they made over a hundred thousand.
There's just no comparing 3d printing with the correct manufacturing equipment. This machine can probably produce hundreds of face shields per minute (wait until the end of the video for full speed):
The TLDR is: 3D printing can start instantly. Someone with CAD skills can have a design made, 3D printed and out for evaluation in hours. In takes days (or weeks) to get a good injection mold tooled and up and running. Then once the injection molding is going, 3d printing can switch to working on something else.
I'm honestly not sure why people don't just use plastic food wrap as a cheap improvised alternative for face shields. It's lightweight, readily available, disposable, fits over any attire and does not restrict visibility.