Aix Marseille University 3D printers are used to make visors for caregivers – Aix Marseille University
- The University of Aix-Marseille has decided to convert its 3D printers to make visors for healthcare workers in hospitals.
- Within a week, a thousand visors were delivered to various hospitals in the Marseille region.
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What if 3D printing could help healthcare workers in hospitals
from Marseille, who face a shortage of equipment supposed to protect them from
coronavirus when the epidemic affects the second largest city in France? In Marseille, the university has decided to mobilize its 3D printers, so far stopped due to the circumstances, to start producing visors which reinforce the protection of personnel.
These visors are made in just a few minutes, from simple material such as the plastic that Aix-Marseille University had in stock for other projects, while the elastics are supplied by the Marseilles textile company Pain de Sucre ” We have listed around sixty 3D printers at Aix-Marseille University, but also with our partners such as Inserm or Centrale, explains Stefan Enoch, associate vice-president of technology sciences at Aix-Marseille university, researcher at CNRS and project coordinator. These printers usually allow you to easily and simply make mechanical plastic parts, which go from the support to hold something up to the parts necessary to build antennas. “
A thousand visors produced in a week
Faced with this new demand from hospital practitioners who approached the university, it was necessary to adapt and start producing this unusual object to say the least. Fortunately, the promoters of this project in Marseille were able to download online instructions made available free of charge by Internet users to manufacture the first prototypes which were then validated by the healthcare teams. The first productions were launched barely a week ago at an impressive rate. “We managed to get out of it more than 150 a day, with a peak of 300 over a day,” says Stefan Enoch. This Monday morning, 1,154 visors were delivered to the AP-HM, but also to the Aix-en-Provence hospital center, Allauch, the European hospital and the Clairval hospital, in the city center of Marseilles. And we have other requests! “
A production that the university decided to deliver free of charge to caregivers. “Hospital practitioners are also university professors, and therefore colleagues we meet,” says Stefan Enoch. And then, we must not forget that it is our students who are medical students! We are asked for help, so we do it in a civic approach, as much as possible and with our knowledge. “
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