As Covid-19 hit New York City, Elmhurst Hospital in Queens was able to source medical face shields from Voodoo Manufacturing Inc., a 3D printing firm located less than five miles away.
Brooklyn-based Voodoo has repurposed all of its 5,000-square-foot facility to make protective face shields for health care workers and hospitals. Elmhurst Hospital has been hard hit by the outbreak. Voodoo aims to print at least 2,500 shields weekly with room to scale its volume of production based on demand.
In a March 31 interview with Plastics News, CEO and co-founder Max Friefeld said that his firm runs 200 3D printers doing everything from prototypes to large runs, but hadn't made face shields until the need arose.
"The shields are a new product for us," he added. "We found open-source designs on the internet and consulted with physicians in New York and Los Angeles that we had worked with."
Voodoo is printing the headbands for the shields from PLA resin. They're then assembling the shields with die-cut pieces of glycol-modified PET (PETG) sheet.
Operating in the NYC area "has been a huge challenge" for Voodoo because of safety restrictions, according to Friefeld, but he said that his firm "is in it for the long haul."