Project: Batch Shields
Partner: Batch Works and Milo Mcloughlin-Greening, Pr Shakeel Shahdad at Barts Health NHS Trust.
Working in collaboration with long standing partner 3D local manufacturer Batch.Works and a clinical team at Barts Health NHS we are supporting the production of affordable 3D printed face shields to help NHS front line workers in the fight against Covid19.
Year
2020
Sector
Medical product/design
Discipline
Product design
Design for manufacture
3D modelling
3D printing
Ethos
Efficiency
Medical standard
Affordability
Agile design
“A streamlined 3D printed product for local production.”
The Updated WHO guidelines recommend all health care workers to wear a full gown and visor face shields to protect themselves from the virus. NHS staff are the most at risk during the current outbreak and currently do not have the right resources to protect everyone. The NHS has even advised its workers to only use the minimum equipment and reduce consumables usage due to current shortage.
Following conversations with some of our clinical partners , we called out to our partner Batch.works to develop a streamlined and cheap 3D printed face shield. Together with Milo McLoughin-Greening, we have raised 10 K£ from a crowdfunding campaign to develop face shield designs.
After the success of our campaign, we have collaborated with a team at Barts Health NHS & Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) optimising their face shield design as well as matching funding to supply 10,000 visors. Batch.works have dedicated their facility to the production at an estimated rate of 500/day with their fleet of 12 3D printing machines. They have streamlined their entire process of production and will be partnering with the start up Pedal me to help with logistics and distribution all over London, in a green distribution process.
“This project has shown great solidarity within the design community.”
This project is showing a huge solidarity within the design and maker community throughout the world: design sharing between Spain, Czech Republic etc have allowed the London team to come up with their own local solution, with a fully automated process and a design that takes 30min to print. The designs will fall onto the open source domain to be used across the UK and used across 3d printing facilities.
Whilst the demand will require larger supply, the combined expertise of the two design led studios will contribute to a national effort, to provide enough protection for the Nightingale Hospital, Barts Health NHS Trust, the London Ambulance Service…and hopefully more!
Project production by Batchworks team.
Project production by Batchworks team.
Co-producers: Cellule studio and Batch.Works
Designer: Milo McLoughin
Design assistance: Cellule studio
Funders: GoFundMe campaign and Barts Health NHS
Photography: Margaux Vaissieres
Special thanks to the volunteers who have helped the production.
Inclusive Design
3D Printing
In our design practice, we aim to design for the uniqueness and diversity of each individual, keeping in mind everybody’s different abilities, needs and desires. We keep our design processes close to the end users and involve them in the decisions we make. We try to understand people’s differences to create better products, services and environments for everyone. We believe that learning from diversity enhances our creativity, and improves our work as designers and people.
Inclusive design means that a product, service or environment is designed with the knowledge and expertise of users who are ‘experts’ of their situations and can prioritize needs. A collaborative design process allows to mobilise a wider range of information, ideas and insights to address a broader social challenge and prevents major errors that could occur from a design-engineer centric approach.
3D printing makes use of the power of Computer Aided Design (CAD) to transform 3D digital objects into reality. The most popular technique is plastic extrusion: a plastic filament is heated to its melting point and extruded through a nozzle layer by layer to create a 3D shape, other techniques such as SLS are fusing particles together with heat, layer by layer. Applications for 3D printing are explored across a variety of fields from prototyping to medical devices, to architecture.
Additive manufacturing is contributing to a paradigm shift towards a circular economy and local manufacturing, where parts can be personalised and created on demand, avoiding unnecessary waste, turning production from a globalised to a local distribution.
Inclusive Design
In our design practice, we aim to design for the uniqueness and diversity of each individual, keeping in mind everybody’s different abilities, needs and desires. We keep our design processes close to the end users and involve them in the decisions we make. We try to understand people’s differences to create better products, services and environments for everyone. We believe that learning from diversity enhances our creativity, and improves our work as designers and people.
Inclusive design means that a product, service or environment is designed with the knowledge and expertise of users who are ‘experts’ of their situations and can prioritize needs. A collaborative design process allows to mobilise a wider range of information, ideas and insights to address a broader social challenge and prevents major errors that could occur from a design-engineer centric approach.
3D Printing
3D printing makes use of the power of Computer Aided Design (CAD) to transform 3D digital objects into reality. The most popular technique is plastic extrusion: a plastic filament is heated to its melting point and extruded through a nozzle layer by layer to create a 3D shape, other techniques such as SLS are fusing particles together with heat, layer by layer. Applications for 3D printing are explored across a variety of fields from prototyping to medical devices, to architecture.
Additive manufacturing is contributing to a paradigm shift towards a circular economy and local manufacturing, where parts can be personalised and created on demand, avoiding unnecessary waste, turning production from a globalised to a local distribution.
