3-D Companies Tackle Coronavirus Supply Shortages

Aenium, which normally makes aerospace components, pivoted in about two weeks to filters desperately needed for medical masks. Employing laser technology for making ultralightweight metal parts, the company developed a four-layer filter made of medical-grade polymer. It can be inserted into 3-D printed masks that HP is now developing, or into existing ventilators.

Many industrial companies are jumping to manufacture medical equipment like ventilators and respirators. With 3-D printers, producers can shift faster, make an array of equipment in one factory and spit out items near where they are needed. The technology, which creates products by building them up in successive layers, can deliver almost any shape from a range of materials. Digital blueprints can be sent from anywhere to printers near hospitals, easing the logistics burden.

HP, among the world’s largest players, is using printer farms in the U.S. and Spain to make hospital equipment such as face-mask adjusters and face shields. HP enlisted help from customers with idle printers, such as dental-mold printing firms. They have been among the first movers because their facilities are already certified by the Food and Drug Administration to make medical-grade equipment.

Siemens, one of the world’s biggest producers of medical equipment and a leader in advanced manufacturing, has tapped its global network of 3-D printing customers, including car makers, to help make equipment. It also has put more than 100 of its own printers in the U.S. and Europe to work. GE and Boeing Co. are printing face masks.

“It’s a huge opportunity” for 3-D printing, said Filip Geerts, director general of European machine-tool industry trade group Cecimo, which has put out a call to its members for help. “You can show it can be customized, and it can be done locally.”

But additive manufacturing, as 3-D printing is formally known, is still in its infancy, and materials and production methods must be adjusted to specific uses. Requirements for health applications—particularly for respiratory gear—are particularly demanding. Printed parts shouldn’t shed dangerous particles or pose other hazards.

The technology churns out parts more slowly than most traditional mass-production methods like injection-molding do, and it can cost more. In normal times, nobody would 3-D print disposable items like filters, swabs or protective masks. But amid deadly shortages, it is filling a gap.

For industrial companies unaccustomed to printing medical equipment, certification poses a challenge. The danger gets worse with hobbyist 3-D printers who want to help local hospitals, industry officials say.

“Every garage maker is trying to make their own masks, showing up at hospitals with protective gear that no one’s validated,” said Kit Parker, a Harvard professor and Army Reserve lieutenant colonel. He is working with the chief executive of nearby 3-D-printing startup Desktop Metal to tackle the shortage of nasal swabs.

Some applications don’t require rigorous certification. Materialise NV, a Belgian 3-D printer and producer of related software, recently posted online free designs for devices to clamp on door handles for hands-free opening. Users include the Mayo Clinic, which has been 3-D printing for 14 years and is now working with others on medical and safety applications to fight the virus, said Jonathan Morris, a radiologist and medical director of Mayo Clinic’s 3-D printing lab. Many hospitals are launching their own 3-D printing efforts.

For parts requiring more expertise, large 3-D printing companies are holding daily calls to discuss design and testing efforts with medical specialists and government officials, said Scott Drikakis, health-care head for the Americas at Stratasys Ltd., a major 3-D printing company based in Eden Prairie, Minn., and Rehovot, Israel. Mr. Drikakis said he has never seen such intense cooperation between competitors.

Aenium is working with HP and EOS on filters that are certified to N95 respiratory-mask standards. It is offering the filters and their designs at no cost, so other 3-D printing companies with the right machines can churn out the porous plastic disks.

“We have all this knowledge, and now we’re applying it to the medical sector,” said Aenium product engineering manager Jose Miguel Ampudia.

The dearth of nasal swabs for testing kits brought Prof. Parker at Harvard together with Desktop Metal Chief Executive Ric Fulop. The need is so great that Washington dispatched military cargo planes to one of the world’s only mass producers in Italy to bring supplies back to the U.S.

Seeking a quick fix, the two men lined up industrial 3-D printing companies, including Formlabs and OPT Industries Inc., to engineer printable swabs. They had to rethink the structure of swabs, including by substituting soft plastic hairlike structures for the typical cotton to grab patients’ mucus samples. The FDA recently signed off on the design, and production has started.

“If you asked me a week ago if somebody could start a whole new thing and in a week be approved by the FDA, and you’re going to make millions of them, I’d have said that’s absolutely crazy,” Mr. Fulop said. “But we did it.”

–Wall Street Journal