Design, Development, and Manufacturing of Cost-Effective Face Shields for COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 is a highly contagious respiratory disease and is declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). COVID-19 has disrupted global supply chains including those of medical products and created severe shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE). To ease the situation, many universities, industries, maker communities, and hobbyists have come forward and shared their designs in the public domain, to enable manufacturing of PPE such as face shields with readily available materials in partnership with local industries. Face shield protects the facial region including the mucous membranes (eyes, nose, and mouth) from splashes of body fluids that could contain harmful pathogens, in this case the novel coronavirus. The design and manufacturing of two novel reusable, low-cost, lightweight, comfortable, and easy to wear face shields are presented in the current article. The headband in one face shield (referred as FS1) is realized via additive manufacturing (popularly known as 3D printing) and the other (denoted by FS2), using conventional milling operation. The novelty in FS1 is its headband, which is designed to cover the ears too while in FS2, the headband is made of 3-ply corrugated cardboard that is biodegradable and recyclable. A 175 microns thick, high transparency, scratch-resistant, and anti-fog sheet are used as the shield material. Mass-producing face shields at low costs (INR 20 or USD 0.27) with the selected manufacturing methods are proposed. Both products received very good feedback from frontline workers.