All posts by : Vera

In compliance with the rules imposed by the Italian government for the health of workers and the fight against COVID-19, company activity at WASP has continued regularly. At the same time, the Italian firm decided to convert its innovation capacity in order to fight Coronavirus. The projects that the WASP Research and Development department has been working on have been temporarily set aside in order to work on two new open source project: the MY FACE MASK with interchangeable filter and the MY SPACE drip protection helmet with ventilation and integrated filtering.

The main issue, as explained in a detailed New York Times article, is that, to put it plainly, “there aren’t enough ventilators to cope with the coronavirus“. The reason why there aren’t enough is that they are extremely difficult to produce and so it takes a long time, even for those companies that have been making these machines for decades. That’s why it’s not about making 3D printed ventilators but 3D printing parts to address ventilator supply chain issues.

CECIMO, as the European association for additive manufacturing, was requested by the European Commission to address its membership and query if it would be able to aid in producing equipment (for instance, valves or ventilators) that hospitals are lacking due to the COVID19 outbreak in Europe. This is how CECIMO fights COVID-19 In this moment of public health emergency as the healthcare sector is facing unprecedented challenges. In particular, the virus outbreak is causing severe shortages of critical medical equipment in hospitals or limited access to essential pieces, in particular valves or ventilators.