As the graphic above shows, 3D printing a face shield is twice as fast as 3D printing a face mask. How do I know?

In my latest journal article called A quantitative analysis of 3D printed face shields and masks during COVID-19, I documented 37 face shields and 31 face masks suitable for fused filament fabrication (FFF, or FDM). The graphic provides the average data for all the different designs, including a range of qualities including the amount of filament required, number of 3D printed parts, total volume of all parts, and the dimensions of the largest part for each design (so you know if it will fit within your 3D printer’s build volume). If you’re interested in all of the specific details for each of the individual designs, all of the data is free to access here. You might also want to start with my first article analysing 91 3D printing projects at the start of the pandemic.

Why is this important? Well, if you look at the graph above, you can see that the print time and amount of filament for each individual design varies significantly. For face shields, the shortest print time was 46mins to produce a single part with 12g of material for the Version 1 face shield from MSD Robotics Lab. The longest print time for a face shield was 4h 34min (274min) and required 63g of filament, also only a single part from MITRE Corporation. This means that for each MITRE Corporation face shield you could 3D print almost 6 MSD Robotics Lab face shields. This is a big difference if you’re trying to maximise the quantity you produce for your local hospital or health centre. Below you can visually see how different they are, and why there is such a difference in print time and filament use.

Print times vary even more for face masks, with the shortest print time being 2h 14min (134mins) requiring 32g of filament for a 3-part design from Collective Shield (v.0.354). This design is 3D printed in a flat form only 0.6mm thick and then folded into a 3D face mask, often referred to as a “2.5D print.” In contrast, the longest print time for a face mask was 10h 32mins (632mins) with 130g of filament required to print 26 separate parts, forming a respirator style mask called Respirator V2 from Maker Mask. Both of these different designs can be seen below.

Assuming a price for PETG filament of $30/Kg, the cost of 3D printed components for face shields can be calculated to range from $0.33–1.95, while the range of face masks was $0.96–3.90. For one-off products these differences may not be critical to makers, yet when multiplied by hundreds of thousands or even millions (e.g. the IC3D Budmen face shield has been 3D printed over 3 million times!), the potential investment by makers, organisations, charities and businesses may vary significantly based on the selection of one design over another, or one version of a design over another.

If you want to find more of the data and read the detailed analysis, please read the full article here. I look forward to continuing to bring you new analysis of 3D printing during COVID-19.

– Posted by James Novak