A PPE face shield designed by engineers at the University of Nottingham is being 3D printed at scale for use by healthcare workers in the fight against Covid-19.
Using the latest additive manufacturing materials at the University’s Centre for Additive Manufacturing, and working with external collaborators, the team will deliver 5,000 of the face shields to Nottingham’s NHS and community healthcare workers.
Building on an open-source design of headband originally from HP, the team in the Faculty of Engineering made modifications to ensure the face shield could pass a regulatory test by BSI, the UK’s national standards body, to meet its essential health and safety requirements which ensures the highest level of protection is provided.
The face shields successfully passed the BSI tests and are CE approved for use as part of PPE for healthcare workers’ protection against coronavirus in both hospital and community environments. They are provided in packs to the NHS, along with five replacement visors per face shield as well as instructions for use.
The team have made the design and its accompanying documents open-source to enable other manufacturers to produce the face shields – however, manufacturers will need to submit their product for testing to the BSI to obtain their own CE certification. Click here for more information on the design.
Richard Hague, director of the Centre for Additive Manufacturing: "Using the flexibility of additive manufacturing (3D printing) and laser cutting technology, we’ve been able to arrive at a design, get it tested and approved, and then manufactured and delivered in a very quick time-frame.”
University of Nottingham www.nottingham.ac.uk
