3D Printing Protective Gear for Healthcare Workers
At Cleveland County (N.C.) Schools, educators are using MakerBot Replicator 5th Generation printers and two smaller MakerBot SKETCH Classroom machines to fabricate masks for healthcare workers.
“My mom is a nurse, and she was telling me how they have to wear the same masks day in and day out because they don’t have enough materials,” says Beverly Owens, an 8th-grade science teacher at Kings Mountain Middle School. “Then I started seeing the same thing in pictures from all over the country, and I realized just how big a problem this was.”
The school already had 3D printers on hand as an aid to classroom education. “I use it to print out things like fossil replicas that the students can use for different lab exercises,” Owens says.
When the COVID-19 crisis hit, she pulled down designs from the MakerBot design-sharing platform Thingiverse and has since printed over 400 pieces of PPE, including masks, face shields and ear guards to make masks more comfortable for long-term use.
“I’ve always felt that if you have the ability, then you have the responsibility,” she says. “I have these machines, I have the capability, and I am happy to do whatever I can to help.”
In Hamilton County, Levine says it took just two days to get her district’s 3D printers up and running in support of PPE production. The rapid repurposing of the technology reflects K–12’s inherent ability to shift on the fly, she says.
“Schools have to able to respond to crises,” she says. “It took us 48 hours to set this up and start producing, where businesses took five to six weeks to get up to speed. School districts are used to continually responding to new challenges and new problems. It makes us very nimble.”