Once-idled 3D printers cranking out face shields

By John Shipley

jshipley@pioneerpress.com

Mark Westlake barely notices the whir and whine of the 3D printers in his Lakeville home anymore. He’s had three of them going 24/7 since last Thursday.

“I can’t tell if I’m just used to it,” he said Monday, “but they’re constantly running in background.”

The printers are on loan from St. Thomas Academy, where Westlake is director of the school’s Innovation Center. Once idled by the statewide shutdown of school campuses, the printers were moved to Westlake’s home and are hard at work printing face shields for health care workers.

“It’s amazing how many dormant 3D printers there are, printers that were maybe used once or twice a month are now just sitting idle,” he said.

The printing isn’t exactly fast; Westlake estimates he can make between 12 and 16 a day, depending on how quickly he gets to the printer when it’s finished making one. But every mask is appreciated by health care workers on the frontlines as the nation tries to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus that has infected nearly 160,000 in the United States since January.

“The truth is, we see ourselves as a stopgap,” said Doug Scott, an engineering teacher in Hopkinton, Mass., who started the network of builders almost by accident. Once word got out, people like Westlake quickly jumped onboard.

“We want to help as much as we can until some of the larger companies get behind this and start to produce the shields that we’re making,” Scott said.

Bauer Hockey in Exeter, N.H., recently refit equipment to produce medical face shields.

Scott, 44, and Westlake, 57, met while working as master teachers for the Lemelson Program at MIT.

“I knew we could help when I showed our plans to a doctor here and he said, ‘Yeah, they’re great,’ ” Scott said Monday. “I asked him how many he could use and he said, ‘I want 60,000 of them.’ And he wasn’t joking. I’m thinking, Well, I’ve got 29.”

Scott began reaching out to colleagues like Westlake, and a network was born. As of Monday afternoon, the Shield Team had members in Alabama, California, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon and Washington.

Westlake has become the point person in Minnesota — he can be reached at innovationcenter@ cadets.com — and already had heard from about 40 makers in the Twin Cities, as well as emergency room nurses and doctors short on personal protective equipment.

Requests, he said, are confidential.

Using a printer file the team has modified since last week, Westlake and others are making the visors for face shields and attaching them to an elastic band. Every other day, he takes his batch to St. Thomas Academy, where he cuts clear acetate sheets into masks and attaches them to the visors.

Total cost, about $2 a mask. The school, Westlake said, is donating the filament and acetate, and students have helped distribute the masks to hospitals in St. Paul and Minneapolis Anyone interested can download the program file and instructions for making the visors on a 3D printer. Anyone with a three-hole punch, Scott said, can make the shields. Westlake said he tries to provide 10 shields with every visor.

Those with smaller 3D printers can make the visors in smaller pieces.

“We make it as easy as possible,” Scott said. “You just punch in your information and follow the notes. We tell you how to produce everything. Then we have a delivery notice so you can tag and date the bags, and then follow procedures to log how many you have delivered.”

John Shipley can be reached at 651-228-5108 and jshipley@pioneerpress.com, or on Twitter at @ShipleyMN.

COURTEST OF MARK WESTLAKE