As the novel coronavirus spreads, hospitals are using more personal protective equipment (PPE) than ever before. There’s been a global shortage of proper face masks and shields, with many hospitals unable to keep up with patient demand. Small, family-owned companies like GriffonCo can make a big difference in the fight to stop the spread of coronavirus. We spoke with Andy to find out more about GriffonCo’s face shields, and how others can help create and deliver masks to hospitals.

Andy Muth, a web developer here at KPS3, and his wife, Katie, own and operate GriffonCo , a 3D printing company specializing in tabletop gaming. GriffonCo was created from a love for Dungeons and Dragons, but now Andy and Katie are spreading love to the community by printing face shields for local hospitals to use while treating COVID-19 patients.

What kind of face shields are you producing?

We are making the face shields provided by 3DVerkstan, a Swedish 3D printing company. We started printing the Prusa shields that were made by an industry leader, but they took too long and required a very specific plastic shield that we were unable to obtain locally. The ones we are making use a transparency sheet or binding sheets. They can even be sanitized and, in dire situations, reused.

How many masks have you produced so far?

We made over 300 full shields in our first weekend of production, and we are still making them. We’re able to make about 100 of the printed pieces per day. Right now, we’re laser cutting the transparency sheets, but we’re looking to streamline that process. Setting the printers to print the piece is a lot easier than having to sit at the laser to cut the shields. So far, we delivered 100 masks to the VA hospital and 200 to Northern Nevada Medical Center on March 30. We’ve also delivered small amounts of three to five to individual practices.

How long does it take to produce a mask, on your end?

Depending on the printer, it takes about 67 minutes to print one visor piece. Some of our printers can do it in as little as 37 minutes because they have larger nozzles and release more plastic. We’re working on getting more large nozzles, but with Amazon prioritizing shipping household goods, we’ve seen a delay.

Our business currently has 19 3D printers — so we have reached out to our customers asking for more time on our deliveries so that we can dedicate 75 percent of our printers to printing these visors for the shields.

The shield piece takes about 16 seconds to cut in the laser cutter, but with the time it takes to swap out the pieces and clean off the cutter bed, the process actually takes about 30 seconds. And, it requires someone to be at the laser consistently. This is where our biggest bottleneck is at the moment, along with the cost and lack of transparency film in town.

What inspired you to tackle this endeavor and extend so much support to our community?

We’ve been watching the news and seeing online that people are using their 3D printers to help local healthcare workers, so we decided to reach out and see if we could help here locally. We spent a few days printing prototypes and deciding which model (there are several online) would be the most efficient and reliable. We went around all over town buying up transparency film that teachers use on overhead projectors and we got to work. We delivered samples to hospital administration, and once we knew they not only would accept them, but they were very much in need of them, we got started.

We were able to get in touch with the right people, and now we are doing everything we can to get as many shields as we can into the hands of those in need. Once we realized we were unable to keep up the demand, we reached out to other local makers and have approximately 20 different groups of people printing visors for us to donate to the hospitals. We are currently receiving requests from various practices all over town. We are hoping to be able to extend our help to Renown shortly.

What other community partners are you working with?

Chris Church from the University was able to get us some larger nozzles over the weekend for two of our printers, which helped output quite a bit. We are now working with a “Reno COVID-19 Assistance” group that encompasses people from all over the region, including the UNR Innevation Center, Reno Collective, College of Engineering, UNR De La Mare Library makerspace, and locals that have other skills and want to help out. We are blown away at the maker community readiness and involvement in helping us provide as many face shields as possible. Without all of this amazing support, we wouldn’t even be able to come close to fulfilling the needs of our area.

We just got word today that Reno Type has agreed to help us put the necessary holes into the plastic shield pieces so we can now finish them much faster once we are able to get a bigger supply of the transparency film or pvc sheets.