Donate your 3D Printer and help print face shields
BBC News published an article (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52111522) about 3DCrowd.uk - they are crowd-printing parts for NHS face shields.
We're going to try with our very cheap hobby printer - but don't know yet if this will be successful........
Update: 5th April: The time it takes to print these probably makes this unviable on a large scale for any individual printer considering the number that are required.
On a very basic printer, it's about 6 hours per set of brackets! But, they are potentially viable if someone can test them & produce them on a larger / faster scale?
If someone wants to print small quantities for re-usable use, it could be worth printing locally, attaching some simple clear plastic and a little tape and giving direct to those that need them.
So if you have a 3D Printer - check out https://www.3dcrowd.uk/ and see if you can donate your skills and help print shield brackets!
You can also check out Prusa directly and see their shields.... https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/25857-prusa-protective-face-shield-rc2
Technical Notes:
The documentation received contained a reference to Prusa printer settings. In my experience, these are not suitable and produced a very weak end-part.
To make a better (stronger / better looking) part - I changed filament settings to output 1,1x, changed the fill to hexagonal, and tweaked the speeds to match our printer / filaments, which actually reduced print time and gave a better result.
(Printing more plastic at a fast speed seemed better than less plastic at a slow speed, which wasn't expected!)