News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
Czech automobile manufacture ŠKODA revealed that it is using its in-house Multi Jet Fusion 3D printing equipment to help in the production of respirators for front-line medical staff. Developed by the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics (CIIRC) at the Czech Technical University, the respirator is designed to be reusable and could help protect doctors and nurses from COVID-19 exposure.
A team of Boston area anesthesiology residents has today officially launched the CoVent-19 Challenge, which invites millions of designers and engineers to come up with a design for a rapidly deployable, minimum viable mechanical ventilator to help treat coronavirus patients. The challenge is hosted on Stratasys’ GrabCAD platform.
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.
Australian metal additive manufacturing company Titomic has made further inroads into the defense market, this time in the United States. The company has announced a strategic partnership with American global product development and technology company Triton Systems Inc through which its Titomic’s Kinetic Fusion (TKF) process will be implemented for validation through R&D projects with the United States Department of Defense (DoD).
3D printer manufacturer Markforged has signed a distribution agreement with Würth Industry of North America (WINA), a distributor of supply chain solutions for fasteners, MRO and safety equipment. As per the agreement, Würth Industry will distribute Markforged 3D printing systems to customers in the U.S. from the manufacturing, oil and gas, heavy equipment and transportation sectors.
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.
3D printing company Essentium Inc. has announced a partnership with chemicals company LEHVOSS Group, through which it has developed high-performance materials for industrial-scale extrusion 3D printing processes. The materials are certified and meet the standards required for applications in the aerospace, automotive, oil and gas, biomedical and electronic manufacturing industries.
Since announcing its strategy to support COVID-19 relief efforts by leveraging its 3D printing resources to produce face shields for medical workers, Stratasys has reportedly received requests for over 350,000 units of the protective equipment. To help meet this growing demand for much-needed equipment, Stratasys is seeking members to join its COVID-19 coalition. To date, the coalition consists of over 150 members, including Boeing, Toyota Motor Company, Medtronic, Dunwoody College of Technology, the University of Central Florida and the University of Minnesota.
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]