It’s the little things that break

April 19th, 2020

When seeing a COVID patient, the most guaranteed form of protection you can have is the PAPR (positive air purifying respirator). It is a system that pulls in air through a viral filter, and then blows it steadily over the health worker's face so they are breathing 100% filtered air.

Many hospitals use the Max-Air PAPR system, but their supply chain has broken down. While we were working on supplying replacement shields, a hospital let us know about broken tabs, a small but necessary component for securing the shield to the helmet. Without them, the machine is useless. One of our volunteers, Phil Ramey, took our sample helmet and tab home.

Overnight, he was able to rotoscope and model the tab and successfully print it using PLA+, with a new one being made every 10 minutes. Interestingly, the original is also 3D printed out of similar material so this replacement can be an uncompromised substitution. We're producing as many as we can and releasing the file open-source so anyone with a 3D Printer can help out. Thank you to all of you for supporting.

Thank you to Tina Ahn at Seton Medical Center for letting us know about it. Thank you to Phil for wizard-ing a solution overnight.

It's a very little thing.

But it helps enable something so important.