CovER - 1500 Covid19 Faceshields

"It is not enough to be compassionate – you must act." - Dalai Lama

In reaction to the global shortage of Protective Wear for medical personnel, makers all over the world started making face-shields using 3D printers.

While everyone was using 3D printers to make face shields which takes around 2 hours two print one, I came up with this design that can be made in 3 minutes top using a laser cutter.

Government of India ordered a nationwide lock-down on 24th of March which bans people even from stepping out of their homes and temporarily shutting down all eCommerce while only essential services were in operation.

Due to lock down I didn't have access to all raw material to make face-shields but enough acrylic in my backyard workshop to make few of these.

Thanks to my wife for giving me OHP Sheets from her college supplies and my mother's knitting kit where I found a roll of elastic.

All this material was just enough to make around 50 face-shields.

After making these face shields I with my father distributed these locally to essential services and recorded short video reviews while strictly following social distancing. I compiled a video and put it online. I wanted to make more but due to insufficient material I put an unfortunate end to this project.

"Sometimes when you least expect it, good things happens."

Turns out to be true !!
Around one week later it got noticed and featured in Indian electronic and print media including-
Hindustan Times, Aaj Tak News & India Today.

Once this happened, I got overwhelming support. While local police department gave required permissions, people came forward to help in procuring raw material to produce and donate more Face Shields.

I made 1500 face shields in next few days and donated these to Health Workers, Gas Stations, Police Department, Indian Army, Pharmacies, News Reporters, Street Vendors and Rickshaw Pullers.

CovER which stands for Covid-19 Emergency Rampart is designed to prevent direct splatter from respiratory droplets such as coughs and sneezes. Rampart means a wall of defense and CovER is the wall of defense standing between Covid-19 and our Corona Warriors.

Features-

• Very light to wear. Weight < 35 grams.
• Wide Elastic Strap for comfortable wear.
• Anti-fog.
• Can be washed/sanitized and reused.
• Made using Medical Grade Acrylic.
• Quick to produce.
• Goes through 4 Stage Sensitization including Disinfectant Dip and Ozone Treatment in Final Stage.

Material Supplies

For Face shield

• Acrylic 3 mm
• Acrylic 1 mm
• Elastic C8 ( 8 Band )
• 1/2 Inch Foam Tape (Optional)
• Super Glue
• Cutting Board
• A4 OHP Sheet 200 Microns

For Sanitization

• Water Bucket
• Ozone Sanitizer
• Bucket
• Disinfectant

Machine & Tools

• Laser Cuter
• Scissors
• Super Glue

According to a study done in University of New South Wales, on an average humans touch their face 23 times in an hour.

Face Touching: A Frequent Habit That Has Implications for Hand Hygiene

Most of the touches involves contact with mucous membrane eyes, nose and mouth which is the easiest pathways for viruses to enter our bodies. Now accidental touching of face can be avoided if it’s obstructed and that is exactly what a face shield will do.

Conclusion - A face shield is preventing spread of virus in following two ways.

1. It prevents the user from direct splatter from respiratory droplets such as coughs and sneezes.
2. It hinders one's face touching habit that may cause infection indirectly.

In addition to this, a face shield also increases life of an N95 mask. So face shield is the second layer of protection over a face-mask which minimize the exposure of face.

3D design of the face shield is made on Autodesk AutoCAD to get the look and feel while I used Adobe Illustrator to make files for laser cutting.

Few iterations are done for the Head part of the face-shield as per availability of material, feasibility, safety, speedy production along with employed suggestions from Health Professionals.

Following three files are finals versions. I have uploaded these here so anyone can download to make.

The making process is simple - Once file was prepared I placed Acrylic sheet in laser cutter and did the speed and power setting according to 3mm and 1mm material. This is done for Head 1 and Head 2 as these are made with acrylic with two different thicknesses.

Head 3 is made with 3mm acrylic and Foam Tape for more comfort.

Once pieces are cut I took it out, washed those to remove smoke residue dipping it in soap water and warm water.

Now that all parts were ready I used superglue to assemble and fix all the parts of head unit.

The elastic also is fixed using super glue which makes it very easy and quick to do it.

Later an OHP Visor is snap fixed.

Now the arrangement of head part to be cut in acrylic is done such that 114 can be made in single run on a sheet of 4'x3' Acrylic.
To cut 114 Pieces it take around 90 minutes so less then a minute for one.

Standard size of an Acrylic sheet is 8'x4', one can make 304 of these in a single sheet which makes the cost of a face-shield less then a dollar.

For cutting Foam Tape I made a very simple jig which employs a slide and cut method. It takes 3 second to cut one.

Similarly for making holes in OHP Sheet I used laser cutting. As the sheet is just 200 microns it only takes 6 second to cut one and place next.
For cutting holes in OHP sheet a Paper Punching Machine can also be used.

For Making 1500 Face-shields I used -

• 5 Acrylic Sheets (8'x4')
• 20 Roles Foam Tape (7.5 meter per Role)
• 11 Super Glue (20ml per unit)
• 3 Roles of Elastic (1 Role = 200 Meter)

Once out of laser cutter, face-shield goes through cleaning process.

Step 1 of cleaning includes washing in soapy water dipping all the cut outs in the bucket.

Step 2 is then followed in which the cut outs are washed with warm water to wash off the soap.

Step 3 is applied once all cut outs are assembled to make a face-shield head which is processing through a solution of disinfectant and water.

Step 4 which is the final step consist of storing complete face-shields in an Ozone Treatment Box.

I am also writing an Instructable on Ozone Treatment Box and will post it soon.

Delhi Police Department played a vital roll in distribution of these face-shields as all the distribution was carried out in lock down period. I also used 'Wefast' app for shipping these to Hospitals, Banks, Media Houses for same day deliveries who were kind enough to send me with few images and shout-outs on social media.

I hope you like this project. I have tried to put all of the build details still if I missed something I will be happy to answer all of the queries in comment section :)

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Remember to follow social distancing and vote for my entry :)