- [Narrator] 3D printing has come a long way

in the past decade.

It's found a home in architecture, biotech, prosthetics,

really anywhere quick prototyping happens.

It's an important technology,

but it's not often front-page news,

or it wasn't until this.

- Massive shortfalls when it comes to testing

and personal protective equipment.

- And where's the PPE?

- Still a crucial demand for personal protective equipment.

- [Reporter] Volunteers are using 3D printers

to craft protective gear

for the ones on the front lines of COVID-19.

- [Narrator] 3D printing has become crucial

for producing medical equipment on the fly.

And the 3D printing community has rallied.

- [Alan] This is all stuff that's bagged and ready.

- [Narrator] We got in touch with a handful of people.

- Hi, how are you?

- Can you hear me okay?

- [Narrator] Individual makers, researchers,

and companies small and large.

- Sorry, I'm just downloading Skype

for the first time in a while.

- [Narrator] And we asked them,

what's it been like to drop everything

and fight COVID in their own way?

(gentle upbeat music)

- So tell me how you got started with all of this?

- You know we were all feeling a bit helpless

as to how we might contribute.

- And actually when we first realized

there's gonna be a shortage of ventilators,

the first thing I thought to do was go in my shed

and pull out my old EMT jump bag.

I got out my oxygen tank and all my masks

and my VVMs that I had to try to start thinking,

what could we do with this?

- I sat down in the hackerspace

and some people saw what I was doing.

And they thought it was cool and asked if they could help.

We've kind of snowballed from there.

- We were able to, within less than 12 hours,

mobilize our largest digital fabrication lab.

Then I also fired up my machines in my lab.

- So we went from initial idea and initial design

from those hospital's two weeks ago,

to now having a final design and manufacturing lines

being set up and a clinical use into hospitals.

- Thing is originally,

I was trying to approach hospital systems,

and two weeks ago they were still like,

"ah, you know, send us some designs

"and we'll look at it maybe".

Then literally like three or four days later

the same hospital systems were like,

"how many can you make me,

"and how quickly can you get them to me?"

- What's the piece that you're actually making right now?

- This is what we're doing here.

- If you're in an emergency situation

you would get a bag valve mask,

so these guys are the standard bag valve masks or BVMs.

When you're using it, all that you really end up doing,

is just taking these bags and squeezing them.

So our thought was why not just create

the simplest possible ventilator

that can pretty much just take these bags

and do the squeezing of them.

- This is the visor portion and this is what's 3D printed.

And it just fits on my head like that.

It's important that then the doctor, or nurse,

or healthcare professional can take it off like this

so that it keeps their hands away from their face.

- And then the front, this is like a binder cover,

or an overhead transparency sheet,

and then it's three hole punched and it matches up

to the three pegs.

- You can see it's about a 6 inch long nasal swab

and it'll collect a nasal specimen

and provide an accurate test result,

even if you're asymptomatic.

- Another design I have here is just a door handle.

You know they found that one of the primary ways

things get passed is by just touching things.

You know, touching the door

which is why everybody's wiping doors down all the time.

But the idea is you strap this on a hospital door,

now you can use your forearm.

- 3D printing is often used for prototyping

rather than manufacturing at a high volume.

What's it been like to totally change gears

and really churn out material?

- I keep saying,

this is actually a really easy thing to make,

but doing thousands of them,

this isn't a making problem, it's a logistics problem.

- (laughs) I've got a pile of these.

I have this tiny little machine at my desk

and it was making one of these every 14 minutes.

Yesterday I had a lot of email and stuff to catch up on,

and so as I was sitting at my desk,

every 15 minutes I would reach over,

I would reach over and just start it again,

start it again, start it again.

- In our network we have a total

of 189 printers contributing.

So as of today actually,

we have donated 12,650 shields

to our New York City hospitals.

- We're getting dozens of emails a day

from hospitals and larger health systems.

We're able to manufacture 100,000 plus swabs per day.

Even just one State might occupy

our entire production facility as it is today.

- But right now we're feeding a bottomless pit of demand

in terms of the hospitals

are taking as many as they can get.

- And with a shortage or a greater need up the chain,

there are so many people still wanting.

- How have you been feeling about doing this work,

considering it's been such a critical moment?

- (sighs) The biggest threat that I'm trying to figure out

how to deal with now is that we're starting to get burn out.

You know, it's starting to fall out of the new cycle

but the need isn't going away.

- This is not gonna do as well

as a commercially available ventilator

but it's gonna do a heck of a lot better than nothing.

And that's really, unfortunately,

the situation we might be in.

Even if there's a chance

that they're not gonna be as effective,

or that they're gonna fail,

that's still a heck of a lot better

than not having that at all.

- My son's a doctor, a resident.

I won't say where he's at but,

let's just leave it at that.

- [Interviewer] Okay, well I hope your son's okay.

- He's fine so far,

but he's had no personal protective gear for 10 days.

- [Interviewer] Are you serious?

- Needless to say I'm sending him some,

right, so. - Oh, good.

- What do you think these efforts say

about the 3D printing scene more generally?

It's unprecedented what's happening right now.

- Well I think it's amazing.

I think it's the informal, kind of bottom-up,

DIY culture of makers, and engineers, and designers,

and architects, that through 3D printing itself

has allowed this to really happen.

- It's like we were built for this.

We have this global network of very smart people

who like to make things and find solutions for things

and the machines that they have to make these things

are in their garages or in their maker spaces.

- Peoples homes and peoples schools and peoples libraries.

3D printers scattered everywhere.

- [Alan] And then when leveraged in mass like this,

it can actually be up a manufacturing pool.

- Probably wake people up a little bit

to what you can do with 3D

and kind of take advantage of that.

- Like after this pandemic is over,

3D printing itself has really staked a claim in the future.

- At some point does it make sense to level up

to a larger scale manufacturing?

What does that look like?

- We all, all of us that are doing this,

are fully aware that 3D printing these visors

is not the most efficient way to make them.

- You have things like injection molded.

Machines that can push plastic into a mold

and make thousands in an hour.

- So, this is where we started

and now we're injection molding now too

'cause this takes about 2 hours to print a set for one.

These we can do two every 20 seconds.

- Injection molding lines,

you could probably make parts quicker and more reliably

but then you also would be down for weeks

building tooling for that.

- Here's the need

and here's where mass production can begin.

There's that gap and so 3D printing fills in that gap.

- [Interviewer] I'd love to know what you think

is next for 3D printing and what's next for you?

- People are reaching out,

wanting to help find low-cost printers

that can be used at home.

It certainly helps with the helplessness

that many of us were feeling

in terms of wanting to contribute and try and do something.

- The world's changing in front of us too

and I'm not sure how it's gonna look

when we come out of this but it'll be different.

- You know, everybody asks me like what my goal is

and I don't even know.

This is battlefield medicine right now

so we're doing the best we can with what we have.

What we're trying to do is supply something,

then supply something better, and then repeat.

(gentle upbeat music)

- Hey, so if you have a 3D printer

and you want to get involved,

a good place to start is your own community.

Look for other people doing the same thing

and for organizations in need.

We also have links below to some of the designs you saw

in the video so check those out and thanks for watching.