All posts by : Vera

Medtronic, one of the largest medical device manufacturers in the world, has released the design specifications for the Medtronic PB560 ventilator system to help address the shortage of ventilators due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The first release over 200 pages of documentation. In the v2 release that was just published, the firm made available manufacturing fixtures, printed circuit board drawings (including multiple BOMs), mechanical part drawings and even all 3D CAD files. Some of these parts could be rapidly produced using 3D printing and Medtronic is certainly not new to the technology.

The AM industry has been working closely with the medical community for many years. From the dental and hearing aid sectors, both of whom have adopted 3D printing as a primary method of production in a myriad of applications, to the medical and biomedical fields, who have integrated 3D printing into scientific research and the development of new medical devices, this partnership has yielded thousands of invaluable improvements into the daily lives of people the world over. EnvisionTEC has been at the forefront of these cooperative efforts since 2002, paving the way for new solutions that could only be made possible via 3D printing.

America Makes is partnering with its member, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to help ensure the additive manufacturing industry can effectively and safely meet the needs of America’s health care workers on the front lines of the Coronavirus crisis [You can find more information on this effort and how to join it here]. Today, March 30th, at 12 pm EDT, 5 pm GMT, America Makes Executive Director John Wilczynski provides a briefing during the webinar on COVID-19 initiatives underway along with the Capabilities and Needs Repository developed in partnership with the FDA.

Hong Kong was one of the first regions to get hit by the COVID-19 outbreak and also one of the first to effectively reduce the rate of contagion. 3dpbm reported early on about local firms 3D printing face shields for healthcare workers. Now a number of other maker projects (and videos) have emerged that can provide some valuable lessons for printing filtration adapters to use on standard 3M masks to protect against coronavirus. Disposable surgical masks had been in shortage since late January, so Hong Kong makers come up with various 3D printable designs to adapt a 3M half mask to extend the number of times it can be reused [STLs available here]