Through my wife, who is a real estate broker, I was asked to print, via my new 3d printer, the headgear component of a face shield. These face shields are dearly needed by Healthcare workers all over the world. I am glad to help make these parts as a way of doing “my part”.

So once the STL file arrived, I started the print. As I am new to this and was having issues with the work separating from the printers bed mid-print – not a good thing – I decided to do what is called a "brim" on the print. This is like the brim of a hat. It extends the first layer out so that it will have additional material to grip the bed and reduce the likelihood of the parts separating from the bed during the print.

The slicer - the program that takes the 3D model and turns it into something the printer can perform - calculates a 3 hour and 57-minute print. This will be the longest I have printed since getting the printer.

The picture shows the print after about 30 minutes or so. This primarily the first layer, but you can see the outline of the headgear if you look closely.

A colleague of mine sent me an article detailing the efforts of the owner of PRUSA printers and the work his company was doing to print face shields for the Czech Ministry of Health. The article is being updated constantly, and from what I can see, the headgear I am printing is the RC2 model of PRUSA’s design. (See the article here)

I was rather flippant regarding the article in that what could I do, as the face shield has other components that I don't have access to, nor could I get -- especially in such low quantity as say 10? However, times have changed... and now I can help.

Well, it now 1:35 minutes into the print and printer says it's 33% done. So than means, I have another 3:10 minutes to go -- or 4:45 minutes in total.

I'll be back

And after 4:17 minutes:

The print is fair -- not great -- there are several iffy spots - but overall quite useable.

OK .. On to the next one!