There is shortage of protective equipment and ventilators in every country but necessity has no law. The Aix-Marseille university has started to use 3D printers to speed up the production of protective visors.
The initiative was launched last weekend after calls on social media from the hospitals in Marseille for more equipment (PPE) to protect health-care staff. After a survey, the university located around 60 3-dimensional printers in laboratories and departments. Industrial partners provided different parts of the visors and supported the initiative.
Currently, around 200 visors can be produced on a daily basis at different sites at the university, where the printers are grouped in order to optimize the production and the delivery to the hospitals.
“All information to make the visors in 3D printing is freely available on our website,” says Stefan Enoch, Vice-President and coordinator of the project, to The Brussels Times. “We have tried to optimize the structure according to feedback from medical staff.”
Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter reported today (1 April) that health-care staff in a municipality had complained that it was not possible to breathe with the visors they had received because they were attached too tight to the face. According to the newspaper, several municipalities are trying to manufacture their own protective equipment while waiting for deliveries.
Asked to comment, Enoch replied that no breathing problem has been communicated to the project from the several hundred users by now.
The specifications for the protective visors can be downloaded here.
The Brussels Times
