Holy crap, guys. We just had 33 3D printers
from Prusa arrived, they're the i3 MK3S. And well, we were going to do a really big and really fun project with them but the world has
changed a lot since then. So let's get started,
there's a lot of work to do. There's a lot of work to do,
there's a lot of work to do. - Normally, our videos start
with an insanely big idea, and then we trim away the fat until we end up with a reasonable one. This was the exact opposite. Our original goal was to
build about 100 face shields, donate them and then hand the
reins over to our community. But at every step in this project, people have stepped up to donate
time, money, or materials, and we are now able to produce
around 300 masks per day. We've got this massive local effort and by the time this video is over, we're gonna let you guys know how to help. That is obviously too big of a task for Alex and Colin to complete alone. Luckily, they don't have to,
thanks to our sponsor, Ting. Why pay for things that
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that with their phone plan since you only pay for what you use. Check it out at the link below to find out how much you can save. (upbeat music) This right here is what we plan on making, 3D printed face shields. So there's two parts
that need to be printed, the headband, got a
bunch of headbands here, as well as the chin piece. Together, these hold a
laser cut piece of PETG that acts as the face shield. And then an elastic holds the whole thing in place on your face. So the purpose of this is pretty clear, somebody coughs or whatever and the face shield keeps
the incoming particles out of your eyes and nose. So the obvious question at this point is why are we not making
masks or respirators? - Oh, what do you think about my mustache? - That is Joseph Prusa, the guy that sent us 30 3D printers for a totally unrelated project. - There is a high
probability it will not sit and seal on your face. And unless it seals perfectly, it is maybe worse than simple cloth mask. - Prusa really kicked off the whole 3D printed
face shield initiative, starting with a community design and then working with the
Czech Ministry of Health on making sure that the
masks were validated. - I wanted to do it the proper way. So I contacted our government,
the Ministry of Health, and we started iterating with them. And everybody was quite
amazed that we had a meeting in the morning and a couple hours later, we bring a new version over. So that was pretty cool to see them for the first time
experienced the 3D printing. - Now as far as approval
in the states goes. - It depends on what approval means. - That's Alan Puccinelli, the founder of Operation Shields Up!, a nonprofit in California that
is coordinating the intake and production of 3D printed face shields. - Long story short, you
know, you can get approval for anything when a situation
is dire enough (chuckling). I hate to say it like that, but this is battlefield
medicine right now, like, literally, they're
showing me these pictures of some guy made one out of a
cafeteria tray and it's crazy. Where we are, it's so severe
that all of the regulations, like even in the state of California for the hospital being able to require that they have protective
equipment has been lifted, because they can't guarantee
that it'll be there. - Alright, so now we've got the
design and certainly a need, now we just have to build the 3D printers. - Well, I guess first thing,
let's get this unpacked. This is going to be one hell of a journey to get all of these done. I think that they said it's what, four hours to make each one? - That's pretty aggressive. But if you're skilled, I
think you could pull it off. - Alright, well, let's get to it. Assembly instructions, good God. I do really appreciate that. It's all colored instructions. So I don't have much concerns of this not going together well. - There's gummy bear.
- Ooh. - Building, this printer
took me six hours. That's way too long for us to be able to get these
printers up and running. So what we're gonna do is
we're gonna distribute these to makers in our local community. They're gonna build them,
we'll bring them back, sanitize them and we can get them running. - [Man] Off to the makers. From here on out,
everything we do is sterile. Coming up on our first
delivery of the day. Hey bud? Should I come over there, I guess? Full on. Awesome. Hey? I bring you gifts. We're building a print farm
to produce face shields. - I've heard rumblings about it. - [Man] Yes, this is the rumblings. Hey. Matt?
- Yup. - I have a gift.
- Amazing. I will, yup. Appreciate you from afar.
- Thank you. - And I'll take care of this and put it together
and get it back to you. Give you a call when it's done? - [Man] Yeah, give me a call. I'll come pick it up.
- 'Kay, sounds good. - [Man] Sweet, enjoy! Leo? (knocks at door) - So it's pretty straightforward I guess? - [Man] Yeah, the
instructions are fantastic. - Alright, cool. Yeah I'll probably get it done by Monday. - [Man] Yeah, that's the
deal, that's the deal. - [Leo] Sweet looking forward to it. - [Man] There we are. - Gonna be a lot of fun actually. - [Man] Yeah, absolutely. - Yeah.
- Thank you very kindly from a distance. - Yes, from a distance.
- Cool, I'm on my way. - Alright. - Printers getting built is finding good but there's literally no
point in doing all of this, if we can't find a way to deliver them to the people that need them. - It's turned into, it's
not really a making problem, it's a logistics problem. I keep saying that to people. - It was during our conversation with Alan that it became clear that
this wasn't going to be just, you know, a fun time building
3D printers and making stuff. At this point, we're pretty
much project managers that somehow need to
coordinate a bunch of makers and get these things to someone. Now the original plan was to send them all to Operation Shields Up! in California, so that we could let them handle the sanitization and logistics. But since starting this project, various local groups have popped up, like BC COVID-19 3D Printing Group and Vancouver Makers for
Emergency Response & Support. We'll be sending our first
batch of face shields to InkSmith in Ontario, though, as they seem to be about a week ahead in terms of sanitization and approval. Ah, awesome. So let's get printing. - [Man] Look at that,
it's a completed printer. That's number two of 31.
- You did the first one? - I did the first one.
- Of course you did. - Yeah. - [Matt] Everything is
all there, all the stuff. - [Man] Fantastic. - [Leo] Sweet. - [Man] Gonna go pick
up 13 more. (chuckles) - Take care.
- Thank you. Look at that, four printers. Oh, look at this operation
you got going on here. I've just unloaded all of the printers that we've got back today. Let's do a little count. So one, two, three, four, five. This one needs a little adjustment. Six, seven, eight, nine, 10 11 12, won't count because it
needs a little love, 13. These three need the extruders
completed in the wiring, that'll bring us up to 18 printers. So it's happening, we're printing. - The most popular 3D printing
material is PLA, this stuff. It's great due to its
low melting temperature and really good print quality. But unfortunately, this also
means it cannot stand up to the temperatures
required for sterilization and is generally less chemical resistant. Instead, we're using PETG. Actually the same stuff used
for most plastic bottles, does not only kind of hold up to the temperatures of sterilization, but it's also much strongler, so less likelihood of
it failing on the job. As a material, it does have some quirks. Like our first test, we tried to print with
the same method as PLA, and it actually welded
itself to the build plate, destroying it on removal. We tried a couple different
methods to address this, but ultimately stuck
with using a thick layer of regular glue stick to
act as a boundary layer. Since then, there's been minimal damage and removing the prints
has been super easy. - Our next logistical challenge
ended up being material. With a little bit of napkin math, we figured out that we would
be using around 800 grams of filament per day per printer, which if you didn't know is
a freaking lot of filament, that's about $400 worth
of the stuff per day. Now to get us started,
Prusa sent us 30 spools and Micro Center donated another 30, which was amazing and netted
us about 600 face shields. But we were able to burn through all of that in a little over two days. What the long term future holds for our print farm is hard to say. But for now, the proceeds
from the folding shirt over on lttstore.com is
going towards someone to maintain it as well as
more filament as needed. So maybe consider grabbing one. Now then, let's address what loads of you have probably been yelling into
the screen this whole time. Why are we not just
using injection molding? Well, that process has
already been started by Operation Shields Up! and
by other companies like Bauer, but until production has been ramped up, 3D printing is a great way
to lessen the supply shortage and do it basically immediately. - I am amazed how quickly the desktop 3D printing community picks it up. And I mean, in just a couple of days, you could see it being printed everywhere. - With almost everything in place, the final hurdle then is sanitization, which, it turns out, isn't all that hard. - So actually, it's a really
easy process like the CDC. We're using like a sodium hypochlorite, which is pool shock, it's pool chlorine. - For us, though, we're just letting InkSmith
handle sensitization since we don't have
any approved facilities for it currently. - In the end, we didn't get
all 30 printing simultaneously, but this 22 right here
is nothing to scoff at. This right here is our
main bank of printers that are firming masks. And on the right over here, we
have some of that, you know, they didn't get fully assembled, but they've been really useful for parts. And then this guy on the end right here has been running test prints, while this one right here
actually just failed. We're now producing
about 300 facial today, which isn't quite as many as we hoped for during the middle of the project, but way more than we ever could
have imagined at the start. Like look at this right here,
there's so many of them. And in each one of these
boxes, there's 100. It's so sick. - This here is our bin of failed prints, which might look like a lot, but we have about 1000
successful prints now. And the smart features like filament run out
detection and crash detection and a whole host of other
things these printers do, make them ideal for print farm use. Well, there are some minor hiccups commissioning each of these printers, some had loose belts or
other missed assembly steps, for the most part, it was pretty easy. Plug them in, let them calibrate and they're off to the races. - Obviously, we can't do
all of this alone, though. So if you guys wanna help out, Prusa has a page of 3D printing groups. So you can try and find
a local group there. There are a lot of
facial designs out there, so make sure that the one that
you're creating from is one that is approved for use near you. And then guys, if there
aren't any groups locally, maybe it's time to make one. With so many people wanting to help out, about the worst that can happen
is too many people step up. On that note, huge shout out to the people that helped us out. So Tinkerine, MG Chemicals,
Maker Cube and MakerLabs, Laman Designs, Murray Wood
Co., Prusa, Jordan Cook, Micro Center, shop.ca,
Operation Shields Up!, and the dozen or so volunteers that all helped us to
assemble these printers on literally zero notice. Massive shout out to you guys. Thank you so much. And thank you to our sponsor
for today's video, Ting. If you use WiFi a lot on your smartphone, why are you paying for a
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another video to watch, why not check out our video
on the cheapest 3D printer. It's less than $100. It's crazy stuff. I mean, it's not great, but
hey, it's something. (chuckles)
Or LTT is just trying to jump on the bandwagon of everyone and their mom posting videos on freakin 3D printed face shields for viewer count. Gotta post what gets watched if I guess.
I was thinking that some form of co-operation was bound to happen between those 2, if you think about it it makes sense, tech enthusiasts and 3D printing go hand in hand. Prusa would be presenting products to an audience that has no problems spending few hundred dollars on PC components. Linus would get interesting content with factory tour and crazy challenges, affiliate links etc. I was expecting to hear “Aaaaaand we have a new sponsor today....” on WAN Show in foreseeable future :-) Guess that will have to wait a bit, but printing PPE is awesome outcome in these times no matter what haters say.