Cal Poly student, healthcare workers design new 3D-printed coronavirus masks
A small group of 3D printer enthusiasts and medical professionals have created a new design for N95 face masks to help aid healthcare workers during the coronavirus pandemic.
Cal Poly student Cristian Sion, who majors in materials engineering and manufacturing engineering, teamed up with SLO Surgery Center facilities engineer Jeremy Ralston and Clint Slaughter, an emergency room physician at French Hospital Medical Center in San Luis Obispo. Together, they’ve used their 3D printers to make more than 200 plastic face masks.
Nationwide, there has been a shortage of personal protective equipment, including masks, due to coronavirus.
N95 respirators are used to protect the wearer from airborne particles and from liquid contaminating the face, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department said it has been able to meet most health care providers’ requests for supplies. But some local healthcare workers, including nurses at French Hospital, said they are not being provided with enough adequate equipment.
Slaughter said conflicting messages about how much personal protective equipment is available made him look into stretching the life of that equipment.
“Right now we are working with this limited supply global supply chain disruption and really unknown number of patients that are going to end up coming in,” Slaughter said. “Knowing that there is a backup, knowing there is an alternative way to protect our front-line providers was really what I was looking for.”
Slaughter, who is the CEO of SLO Makerspace, started using the 3D printer at the San Luis Obispo membership-based workshop to work on a mask design.
Ralston, meanwhile, reached out to the Cal Poly amateur radio club to see if they had a 3D printer and was connected with Sion.
Sion owns Addative Engineering, a 3D printing service that he runs out of his garage in San Luis Obispo. He got into printing about two and a half years ago when he bought the 3D printer to use for a class project.
“I used to think 3D printing was kind of silly, only for like toys and knick knacks and artwork,” Sion said, “but soon I learned 3D printing can make a lot of useful stuff and if you do it right you can make really strong parts.”
Sion was already looking to see how he could help during the pandemic when Ralston reached out to him for assistance.
The two worked off of a design called the “Montana Mask” and have made several changes to it.
Ralston and Slaughter were later connected by French Hospital chief medical officer Jim Malone, who had heard about their projects.
“Between all three of us, our brains, working on this has actually been phenomenal,” Ralston said.
Since the trio began working together about three weeks ago, they’ve come up with five iterations of the 3D-printed face mask. They have tested their masks on about 180 people and gathered feedback to help come up with a final design.
According to Sion, doctors and nurses told him that earlier versions of the masks were often difficult to breathe through — so he increased the filter size in his masks by 50%. He and his collaborators also added an outside protective clasp and created two different mask sizes for different face shapes.
The three are now waiting for approval from the National Institute of Health and hope to be able to provide the masks to the medical community.
For now, they will continue improving their design and testing. They have also created a website and shared how others with 3D printers can make the masks.
“That was our main thing, we want this to stay open sourced, so anyone can access it and be able to print it with guidelines of how to put it together and how to print,” Ralston said.
How the 3D printed face masks work
The 3D printed masks serve as holders for the N95 filters, which can be replaced easily with their design. The replaceable filters and reusable masks allow supplies to last for a longer period of time, Sion and his collaborators said.
The 3D mold also uses less of the N95 filter material than a mask that is entirely made of it.
“The problem right now is sort of sourcing the filter material, so our invention, what it does is takes use of preexisting filters,” Sion said. “So you can make to two, three, four filters out of (one mask) and turn one mask into several.”
According to Ralston, the plastic has been tested and is shown to keep any liquid particles out, just like the N95 mask would.
“That testing was actually done using room temperature milk. They actually squirted through, which would be similar to blood, to see if there was any penetrations and if it was still wipe-able,” Ralston said. “It actually worked very very well.”
Sion said the 3D printer works like a hot glue gun, working in three dimensions as it layers the plastic.
Each 3D mask costs about $1.35 to make, but producing one takes anywhere between two and five hours depending on the quality, according to Sion and Ralston.
“We’re trying to get at least a durable rugged quality out there so it’s not something that breaks down,” Ralston said. “I don’t want to put something out there to other people that I wouldn’t use myself.”
According to Ralston, the federal Centers for Disease Control said one filter can last all day, unless the wearer comes in contact with an active COVID-19 patient.
To clean the printed masks, Ralston said Clorox hydrogen peroxide wipes work best.
To access the open sourced directions to create the 3D printed masks or donate to the group go to SLORespirators.org.
This story was originally published April 14, 2020 at 1:23 PM.
