More than 150 organizations responding to pandemic; requests from hospitals, other organizations exceed 350,000 shields.

A coalition of companies and universities assembled by Stratasys Ltd. to produce face shields leveraging 3D printers now numbers more than 150. Among others, the list includes Boeing, General Atomics, Medtronic, Dunwoody College of Technology, the University of Central Florida, and the University of Minnesota.

In an effort to confront the COVID-19 pandemic, Stratasys set an initial goal to produce 5,000 face shields at no cost to recipients through its own and partner resources by March 27, 2020. This includes both a 3D-printed visor and a clear plastic shield that covers the entire face. That number will be exceeded by the end of the day on March 27, and the coalition should be able to produce more than 11,000 face shields the week of March 29, and 16,000 or more during the following week.

Any 3D printing shop that wishes to help print at least 100 visors can fill out an online form to be invited to join the effort. For the U.S., Stratasys is using its GrabCAD Shop work order management software to assign orders from healthcare systems to each coalition member. In Europe, the company is serving as a hub to connect service bureaus with those requesting help and has fielded offers and requests in most of the larger countries. The company also has posted the full face shield printing and assembly instructions for anyone to produce face shields on their own.

So far, the coalition is serving the needs of more than 30 different health systems, covering hospitals, clinics, academic medical centers, and nursing homes. Stratasys has received requests for 350,000 face shields, so further acceleration in production across coalition members is critical.

Stratasys is producing thousands of visors itself in Minnesota, California, and Texas, marshalling the resources of Stratasys, Stratasys Direct Manufacturing, and MakerBot. This is in addition to continuing to meet other requests of customers and partners for 3D printers, materials, on-demand parts, and service. “Stay in place” orders are not currently limiting its ability to meet these needs other than limited access to on-site support.

The company is also responding to the crisis in additional ways, including ramping up production of 3D printing materials to support its partner network. It also has made free the material licenses on many of its high-end printers used to make the visors during this time.

An initiative led by anesthesiology residents of Massachusetts General Hospital called the CoVent-19 Challenge will launch next week. The challenge will ask engineers and designers to help develop a new rapidly deployable ventilator and other innovative solutions to the ventilator shortage, and Stratasys will support the challenge and promote it via its GrabCAD community of more than 7 million professional designers, engineers, manufacturers and students. The company will also provide prototyping services to the challenge finalists.

Manufacturing companies heading towards the Smart Factory can find that at a time of a downturn it can be a perfect opportunity for a digital transformation.

I received this article a few weeks before COVID-19 became a global pandemic. Looking through my emails it caught my attention and I knew it would be a good time to offer up these insights on how in slower times it is wise to look toward your digital transformation.

We are still open for business and here to report on the developments in medical device and equipment manufacturing. So, how you are faring during the pandemic? Drop me a line and let me know what new projects you have going, how the stay at home order crossing the world is impacting/not impacting your business, or what are your general thoughts on manufacturing today. Stay healthy,  stay socially distant!

Anticyclical behavior is a subject already discussed in economics classes at high school. The students are taught that saving in good times is useful to be prepared for bad times. Spending in bad times on the other hand helps to boost the economy. A similar approach can be applied for manufacturing companies.

"If you invest in the infrastructure of your production during a lull, then you are ready to start before the next economic recovery," says Jürgen Petzel, vice president sales at MPDV. "A manufacturing execution system (MES) like HYDRA helps detecting waste in production and reveals unexpected efficiency potentials." 

Wisely using free resources In times of low order volumes, the existing resources – be it machines or human resources – cannot always be utilized to capacity. A sensible solution therefore is to use any vacant times for other purposes. You could introduce an MES or extend the system in use.

"Take advantage of the opportunity and connect idle machines to the MES more quickly. Also test new functions in parallel with production. Such times are also perfect to train your production staff and to bridge longer unproductive periods," Petzel explains. "At the same time, you might be able to secure jobs."

When preparing the implementation or extension of an MES, the organizational processes can be optimized and streamlined, if required. Experienced MPDV consultants analyze current processes and suggest optimizations before digitizing unnecessary complex structures. If the usual time pressure is removed, you can tackle the MES implementation with all eyes set on the job.

Petzel reports: "Especially when production is not running at full capacity, we can use the time to standardize the MES project as far as possible – just like in a greenfield project. The advantage is obvious: If we can integrate most of your requirements in the standard, the costs are much lower, both the initial investment and the costs over time."

Another benefit is that the operation and maintenance of IT systems close to the standard are undemanding as no custom-built features must be observed.

Before you invest, get informed If things get tight due to the economic situation, you can use a downturn period to inform yourself about the possibilities of an MES. This takes time – and time is what you have. To this end, MPDV offers a wide range of information events. The workshop MES and Industry 4.0 provides for interested specialists and executives an overview of the scope and possible benefit of an MES and the first steps needed to reach the Smart Factory. As part of the workshop, a HYDRA user reports about their experiences with the system.

In the course of the Workshop Best Practice MES, a manufacturing company outlines how they use HYDRA in live operation and explains on site the functions and advantages of an MES. If business trips are not on the agenda, the webinar series is perfect to inform yourself about MES. In four webinars over the year, MPDV informs about application areas, functions and benefits of HYDRA and introduces interested participants to the world of Industry 4.0.

Petzel adds: "For most of our users, everything started with a visit to one of our information events. The high number of participants proves that the demand for information is still high. By attending these events, you are in pole position in the race for competitiveness in times of digitization and Industry 4.0. So don't hesitate and meet the challenges now.”

Around the country groups of faculty and students are designing ventilator parts, face shields, protective gear, more using 3D printing, other technologies.

Amid the global pandemic, a lot of the news that’s been flooding my inbox is highlighting how people are helping.

Aerospace engineering students, students on high school robotics teams, faculty mechanical engineers, and many more are showing the collaboration among disciplines and communities to develop personal protective equipment (PPE) and other medical equipment.

Georgia Tech also launched a rapid-response website to address any supply chain challenges. 

Assistant Professor in the Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, Fuda Ning, and his team successfully printed out a flexible mask prototype. This print consists of soft TPU (green) and rigid PLA filter holders (white and orange) on each side. The team tailored out two pieces of the circular HEPA filter and insert them to each holder. A metal strip was later integrated with the mask to conformally seal the nose portion (just as N95 mask and surgical mask do).

Engineers at Binghamton University, State University of New York are stepping up on several fronts to help regional healthcare providers deal with the coronavirus pandemic, including designing ventilator parts and face shields.

Faculty in the Department of Biomedical Engineering have completed a prototype of an N95-like mask using a 3M electrostatically charged filter that is capable of capturing viruses, and they also have a design for sterilizing N95 masks using ultraviolet light.

Fuda Ning and Jia Deng, both assistant professors in the Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, are working with local hospitals to design and 3D-print ventilator adapters that will allow more than one patient per machine if necessary. They are working on this project with Scott Schiffres, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Click here to read more about the 3DP work to help product PPE.

A research team from universities on two continents is racing to develop do-it-yourself healthcare gear that can be assembled where it’s needed from components available locally. Uusing 3D-printed parts, plastic-lined tablecloths intended for birthday parties, laser-cut gears, and similar substitutions, team members figure they have about two weeks to get the designs right and share them with anyone who can help with the needs.

“We’re trying to figure out how to get these things to scale in the time we have,” says Shannon Yee, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering who’s working on the ventilator issue with a half-dozen colleagues at Georgia Tech and other universities. “We are looking at producing things very quickly and this is where having contacts with mature manufacturing sources is going to help.”

The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory and Georgia Tech serves as a bridge between healthcare needs and the broad technical know-how at Georgia Tech, and Georgia Tech researchers are talking regularly with hospital systems to discuss their needs. So far, hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes, face shields, respirator masks, and ventilators have been identified as critical needs. Using resources of the Flowers Invention Studio – such as 3D printing – the group has already produced 1,000 face shields and is preparing to fabricate thousands more in the form of kits that hospitals can assemble.

The team is launching a website to both quantify the needs for face shields and solicit supplies of materials. Because the world’s supply chains are unable to ship conventional PPE components, they are looking for alternatives that may not now be part of that production.

While the face shield is the most mature project the team is developing, researchers are also looking at other needs of the medical community. Among them are ventilators, disinfecting wipes, and respirators.

Click here to read more about the PPE production.

When representatives from Phelps Health, anticipating a shortage of protective masks due to the coronavirus outbreak, needed help, students, faculty and staff at Missouri S&T answered by harnessing the power of technology and ingenuity.

Campus was abnormally quiet Saturday and Sunday, March 21-22, 2020, not only because it was the weekend before spring break but also because, due to the coronavirus outbreak, most students had moved out for the semester and a majority of faculty and staff prepared to work remotely. But 3D printers in a couple of buildings on campus were humming away, fabricating prototype masks and face shield brackets.

Inside the Kummer Student Design Center, where S&T students usually work on rockets, solar cars, Mars rovers, and other projects, a few students, faculty and staff outfitted one room Saturday with a dozen 3D printers to produce prototypes for Phelps Health’s physicians, nurses and other medical workers.

Across campus, students at Missouri S&T’s Makerspace were using their 3D printers to fabricate prototypes of the face shield brackets. The university enlisted more printers for the cause Sunday.

Burton asked Missouri S&T Chancellor Mohammad Dehghani if it was possible to harness the university’s 3-D printing capabilities to aid in the effort. Dehghani directed others across campus to do what they could to assist.

Click her to read more about the printer farm they are developing to produce 24 hours a day.

Companies that had planned to restart production by the end of March are now waiting until early or mid April.

UPDATE March 31, 2020, 9 a.m.: Ford has indefinitely delayed reopening its plants. The only facility with an opening date is the Rawsonville Components Plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, which will reopen April 20 to build ventilators to treat COVID-19 patients.

Cleveland, Ohio – Automaker responses to the growing COVID-19 pandemic mirror the national response – as understanding of the threat grows, so does the severity of countermeasures. In late February and early March, the response was limited to individual shift cancellations for extra cleaning, encouraging office staff to work from home, and limiting travel. Plant and office shutdowns targeted at days or a week followed.

Several major automakers announced plans Thursday to extend shutdowns that were due to end at the end of the month through early or mid-April. The list of closure extensions include:

About the author: Robert Schoenberger is the editor of Today's Motor Vehicles and Today's eMobility and a contributor to Today's Medical Developments and Aerospace Manufacturing and Design. He has written about the automotive industry for more than 20 years at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio; The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky; and The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi.

Includes manufacturing ventilator, respirator parts, filtration systems in Brazil.

Embraer is working in partnership with companies and research centers on technologies that can increase the availability of equipment and solutions to combat COVID-19 in Brazil.

The actions, developed jointly with Embraer's supply chain, include the manufacturing of parts for the ventilator and respirator industry, the replacement of imported components for ventilators, the development of high-efficiency filtration systems for transforming regular hospital beds into intensive care beds and studies for the development of simple, robust and portable respirators aimed at rapid implementation and availability.

A group of professionals has already been leading initiatives in support of a respirator factory in Brazil, with a plan to start the production of parts next week, in response to the emergency demand for this equipment. Embraer, in cooperation with partner organizations, has already completed the technical and production capacity analysis required to meet the identified needs.

In partnership with the Albert Einstein Hospital in São Paulo, Brazil, Embraer is also working to provide technical support for the development of biological air filter systems for air-quality control, which can convert regular hospital beds into intensive care beds. Using highly efficient filters for absorbing air particles already used in aircraft air conditioning systems, the objective is to provide this solution to hospitals with immediate needs.

Another work front is dedicated to analyzing the manufacturing of control valves and flow sensors for another respirator industry in the country, in addition to adapting an existing respirator model for use in combating COVID-19.

The analysis of innovative solutions and the potential of additional actions the market presents can contribute to identifying new opportunities for action. The global health care system is facing an unprecedented scenario, and Embraer plans to apply its capacity during this moment of global collaboration and demand for effective, short-term solutions.

Embraer will keep monitoring the situation to find ways to contribute by using its expertise integrating complex systems for the benefit of the society in this worldwide cooperation to combat COVID-19.

Embraer manufactures commercial jets up to 150 seats and is the main exporter of high value-added goods in Brazil. The company maintains industrial units, offices, service, and parts distribution centers, among other activities, across the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe.

Tell us how COVID-19 is impacting your business. Take the survey here.