Where is the 3DP community's coronavirus response?

[626Pilot]

Hi everyone. Long time no see. I haven't been 3D printing lately. My printers are in storage. Perhaps the time has come to bring them out.

I saw a story recently about some Italians who printed ventilator valves for a hospital. The manufacturer wanted US$11,000 (equivalent) for each one, had none available, knew perfectly well that people would die without them, refused to provide CAD files, and threatened to sue people who offered to design and 3D print replacements. (The finished parts were about US$1 each.)

Personally, I think these revolting, murderous profiteers should be dragged into the Hague and made to answer for crimes against humanity.

Anyway, we are soon to run out of a lot of things that can be produced on 3D printers, including medical supplies. There have to be hospitals all over the world that need such things. Plenty of other worthy organizations and people, as well.

It seems to me that there ought to be a large effort to figure out what is needed and where, to orchestrate efforts to design things in CAD (where necessary), to farm out production to volunteers, and to arrange delivery to recipients.

Whether or not any individual wants to get involved in reproducing copyrighted/patented stuff that could get them sued, well, that's up to them.

I was not able to find anything on Google, including these forums. Does anyone know if any such movement is underway? Are there any 3DP-related companies/websites we might approach about sponsoring something like this?

[artexmg]

I was thinking why not an opensource respirator design? ... then I found hackaday created a post to run a medical hackathon on March 12, but it seems to me that there are only good ideas but no action there.

The interesting news is that there is a challenge from the Montreal General Hospital to design an opensource respirator, https://www.agorize.com/en/challenges/c ... ge?lang=en

So, what could we do? I don't know yet, but I am ready to jump in and looking for ways to help.

[artexmg]

This is the link to the italian 3D printed valves: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-519 ... o6_sKPFVyI

[artexmg]

I was thinking why not an opensource respirator design? ... then I found hackaday created a post to run a medical hackathon on March 12, but it seems to me that there are only good ideas but no action there.

The interesting news is that there is a challenge from the Montreal General Hospital to design an opensource respirator, https://www.agorize.com/en/challenges/c ... ge?lang=en

So, what could we do? I don't know yet, but I am ready to jump in and looking for ways to help.

I just reviewed the teams for the challenge and there are only two, one of them I think is not a team because it is only 1 person. The second team seems to be made up of 3 engineering students and 3 high schoolers. I am not sure they are up to the challenge.

There are another 70 incomplete teams.

Did I mention that there is a prize of $200,000?

Teams can be up to 20 ppl.

[artexmg]

Guys, this is a way to help.

Probably you are aware of “Helpful Engineering” (https://www.helpfulengineering.org/), which is a group of volunteers with diverse backgrounds helping with the response in shortage of supplies during this crisis.

While there is the usual bunch of project that seems to be not really useful, there are others that are really promising, at top of them a few designs for ventilators.

It seems that they’re in shortage of good skilled 3D Modelers and ppl with experience in Injection Molding.

So, if you want to join, there is a Slack Channel, you can find it on the webpage, or you can PM with your email and I can add you to the group. And can redirect you to the specific channel(s) that needs this type of expertise.

Cheers!