During the COVID-19 outbreak, a coworker reached out to me to help him and a few others he had recruited to start 3D printing face shields. I pulled the 3D printer that I built and have slowly been modifying since high school out of the garage and tried to start printing. While printing the first mask, I must have pushed the thing too hard and blew out a stepper driver. It was never a great printer, I managed a few good prints here and there, but overall, I spent more time fixing it than it ever did printing. I started building it when I was 17, and a budget printer was over $300. Things have changed quite a bit. I went out and bought an Ender 3 Pro from Creality. The price was a steal. Turns out I timed everything perfectly, as it arrived right as almost every sub $400 printer immediately went out of stock. We decided to go with shields with large visors, as they were the first 3D printed shield that we found that was reviewed by the FDA and deemed acceptable for hospital use. These are definitely not the most common masks, as they took a significant amount of time to print (approximately 1 an hour). We found many other people on social media printing the small stackable variety, however our response from the first round of donations were very positive, so we kept the larger design. These required a few things on top of the masks: elastic banding to hold the mask onto your forehead, and the plastic sheet that actually covers your face. These masks have special mounting printed into them allowing us to use a standard 3-hole punch to fit the sheets onto the 3D printed part. With the help from those who couldn’t print, we started cutting the elastic to a standard size to fit. Not including print time and electricity, they cost about $2.50 each.

With 4 of us now printing, we were going to go through a lot of plastic. We created a Facebook fundraiser with the intention of getting a couple hundred dollars to help at least buy plastic. Within a few days the donations hit $3000. We committed to donating a mask for every $3 raised, as that would cover the cost of maintenance that would surely creep up on us throughout the project. This was when we planned on receiving maybe $1000 max. With the surge of funds, we took a few liberties. We used the funds to buy an Artillery Sidewinder with the intention of speeding up our production and donating it to a local high school when this was all over. The Sidewinder had a larger bed than our printers, and with a 1.2mm nozzle, it could crank out a mask in under 40 minutes. Donations have since slowed down, and we currently sit just over $3500. We haven’t shut down the fundraiser, but we’ve decided to commit to 1200 masks, with the potential for more if the money comes in.