Thursday, June 25, 2020

Ugh....
Too many people are asking us about my efforts fighting COVID.  I'm going to put all my content relating to that here:


MASK MAKER(EXPONENTIAL)

Fancy tech that makes masks exponentially(up to around 200 masks per worker per hour).  Costs about $1 per mask.


picture of all of the materials used to cast masks
Top down picture of the mold. It is next to a ruler.
Mask is identical to the Montana mask which has gained clinical acceptance. Except it has a much smoother surface and it's very durable.
Dropped the mask down 14 stairs 10 times. Found no fractures or cracks under 90x magnification and both visible spectrum and IR(850nm)
The downloadable printed object is in the lower left. The stack of teal molds was made from filling the 3D print. I can make a mask every 10 minutes. Soon I will make a mask every 5 min. Produced mask in the upper left(I didn't brush off the flashing so you can see the air vents in the mold)
You'll want to use something other than a carbon filter. I put a carbon prefilter in front of a HEPA in the picture. I have been wearing these masks everyday for over 8 hours. They are not more uncomfortable than a properly fitted fumigation mask.
About 50 masks in an arch. The result of filling the stl will silicone is in teal. The mask is in the mold to show air vents.

Reference Model 
A nestable mold master for pouring unaltered Montana Masks
The printer doesn't matter as long as you can fit the massive 6 1/4" x 8 1/14" (70cm x 210cm) object.  You can print with rigid ABS, PLA, a flexible Nylon, or anything that will easily hold its shape. Use a 100% infil as you will be clamping this part.  The finished print needs to have at least a shore A hardness of 60 or more. I produce each mask at $0.98 and the rubber for the mold is $12.64
 
 You're not making a mask with the printer.  You're making a two-part container to cast molds(from ecoflex or moldstar) to make masks.  Then pour masks out of Smooth-on's 61D or Task 8(if you need the mask to survive an autoclave).  This sounds like a lot of work, but there are cumulative returns on your effort!  That means you'll produce masks exponentially. 

Create N-1 masks per hour where N= the molds you've casted.  On Apr 20th, I created 50 masks.  On April 21st, I was able to increase production to over 100/day while still working and only using my 15 min breaks, lunch hour and some time outside of work.

For example, if you poured 15 molds, you can create 14 masks an hour or  168 masks per day without a 3D printer.  If you 3D print five mold masters, you can cast five molds at a time!  This will scale more exponetially than the virus is infecting people!  Go team Humans!

Note that 61D can't go through an autoclave, but in talking to hospitals, they're just using bleach water here in Montana.  Smooth-On recommends using Task 8 if you want your mask to survive the autoclave.  Bleach water has been proven effective on a ABS FDM version of this mask via a culture test.  Culture tests are a good start... but they don't indicate the irradication of a virus.  Having said that... bleach kills over 99.99% of viruses and Covid19 is proven to be one of them. 61D has much lower porocity than ABS FDM.  It should perform far better when washed with bleach water or even wiped with a Saniwipe.  If you pour your masks with Task 8, it will be able to withstand an autoclave.
I recommend using long clamps to hold the molds together.  I stop at sections of 15 molds because my clamps aren't long enough.    15 molds per clamping might be a good number to stop at anyway.


Printer Technology/Material 
Powder Bed Fusion
Printer Make/Model 
zprinter 150
Keyword(s) 
n95 stop gap mold exponential creation
Click to Enlarge - 8 image(s)
picture of all of the materials used to cast masks
Top down picture of the mold. It is next to a ruler.
Mask is identical to the Montana mask which has gained clinical acceptance. Except it has a much smoother surface and it's very durable.
Dropped the mask down 14 stairs 10 times. Found no fractures or cracks under 90x magnification and both visible spectrum and IR(850nm)
The downloadable printed object is in the lower left. The stack of teal molds was made from filling the 3D print. I can make a mask every 10 minutes. Soon I will make a mask every 5 min. Produced mask in the upper left(I didn't brush off the flashing so you can see the air vents in the mold)
You'll want to use something other than a carbon filter. I put a carbon prefilter in front of a HEPA in the picture. I have been wearing these masks everyday for over 8 hours. They are not more uncomfortable than a properly fitted fumigation mask.
About 50 masks in an arch. The result of filling the stl will silicone is in teal. The mask is in the mold to show air vents.
Rate of production grows exponential up to around 230 masks per hour per person. At home manufacturers need ZERO equipment(just some clamps). I've tested this with hackerspace members.

New super shiny cool stuff:

https://3dprint.nih.gov/builds/saintmeh/nestable-mold-unaltered-montana-mask-exponential-home-manufacturing

https://3dprint.nih.gov/discover/3dpx-013921









NIOSH PRETESTING RIG (N99 MASK)





blarg....   see two blog posts from now.  Copy/paste was giving me grief and I want to spend more time actually researching and developing cool shit instead of communicating to others why our work is important.  Really, why do people even have to be convinced that we're awesome at this point?









Deprecated crap(archives):


https://3dprint.nih.gov/builds/saintmeh/richardson-mask-mold

https://3dprint.nih.gov/discover/3dpx-013379
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