Covid-19 response

I worked with the mask-making group "The Maskateers" supporting them with mask templates and printing out "earsavers" as well as acting as a board member and assisting with logistics.

Mask Templates

The mask making group "The Maskateers" out of Eastern Connecticut were having issues with both production quantity and uniformity in their masks. They produce mask covers for first responders, these covers go over the regular N95 mask prolonging its life. The Maskateers have produced more than 48,000 masks as of July 20th 2020. I produced 103 mask templates which ensured a uniform product from the Maskateers.

This is the most recent design of the templates i am making, the templates you see on the left are all size large, the smaller template is for the mask liner and the larger template is for the outside of the mask. I have been producing mask templates of this variety in 4 different sizes.

This was my first attempt at a mask, it was based on a PDF of a mask template the head of the Maskateers sent me. I only ever 3D printed two of these because of a few issues it had:

  1. It was short enough that the cutting wheels that the mask makers use could go over it when they were trying to use it.

  2. It took a long time to print due to a large bottom layer.

  3. The possibility of print failure was higher due to the long print time and large bottom surface area that can lead to warping.

This Is the second rendition of the template, it fixed all of the previous problems by being thicker and by deleting the center bit. I did a fair amount of optimizing in the slicer and was able to get the print time from over 2 hours to 50 minutes for the large size. This part was very functional but i received some feedback from the mask makers:

  1. The cutting wheel got stuck on the bottom right hand side corner

  2. the back of the mask does not need to be that large

  3. It is hard to tell what size the template is

This is the current rendition of the template, to improve it from the feedback I tapered back the end of the template and removed the awkward angle from the bottom right hand side, I also added text so you can tell the size of the template. The feedback i have gotten from this design is overwhelmingly positive but i have been told that on future versions I should taper back the end even further.

Earsavers

Because of the Covid-19 epidemic many people are having to wear masks for many hours on end. This puts significant strain on the ears of first responders, grocery store workers, and more. One solution to this is called an "earsaver" they hold the elastic straps behind the ears holding masks tight while revealing strain from the ear. I delivered 681 ear savers.

These are the earsavers i printed for a long time in between orders of mask templates, I chose this variety because they are NIH approved. I was able to optimize the printing of them in prusa slicer to be able to print them in sheets making 8 of them in just over an hour very reliably, in the first 300 printed only 6 of them weren't good enough to be donated.

After getting the mask template design to a good point I was able to spend some time designing my own earsavers. I looked through the NIH website and used the earsavers they approved and rejected as a guide to produce a fast printing, cheap, and reliable ear saver that meet the NIH recommendations. The Solidworks files i made are robust enough to be altered and designs added to them like the heart and state of Connecticut. The minimalist design can be printed in sheets of 8 that take 32 minutes (4 minutes per earsaver). These earsavers cost less than 4 cents each to produce and can take more than 20 pounds of force from each end before breaking.

Download the STL for the fast printing earsaver here:

Utilitarian_earsaver.STL