As the coronavirus epidemic spreads worldwide, several initiatives have emerged within the 3D printing community. From hobbyists printing face shields to companies printing nasal swabs, it's been incredible to see people stepping up in the fight against COVID-19.

The Markforged team has participated in this initiative and is working with leading medical institutions around the world to develop designs that will help in the fight. There's a lot of debate about which files are best to print, so we'll first look at how 3D printing can help during this challenging time and then explain what Markforged is doing specifically. We plan to release a detailed knowledge base this week to provide a centralized source of information.

We believe 3D printing offers two advantages during this time. The first is the immediate availability of critical items such as face shields and nasal swabs. A distributed 3D printing network can alleviate shortages of critical medical equipment (especially PPE) and consumer goods that are out of stock by printing and distributing 3D printed parts locally.

The second option is to make production lines flexible, especially with regard to supply chain issues. 3D printing offers manufacturers the flexibility to respond to shocks and spikes in demand by scaling their production line or removing bottlenecks in the supply chain. This can help existing manufacturers of critical parts further increase production or help manufacturers in various industries quickly transition to medical hardware production.

The biggest advantage is that the answer isn't to 3D print everything. There may be times when it makes sense to print an entire ventilator, and there may also be times when it makes more sense to print components that allow manufacturers to quickly change their production lines using low-volume 3D printed parts.

As a global company based in a city severely impacted by COVID-19, we feel compelled to step up and help. It's in our culture to give people the tools they need to reinvent the way things are made. 

Search for impactful projects‍

Because 3D printing offers a flexible platform that can be adapted to many different situations, we've seen many fantastic ideas. We've assembled a task force within Markforged to identify the biggest impacts our technology can solve.

The challenge is finding the right projects: For us, this means having proven impact in the medical community and being able to be distributed and printed by a wide range of 3D printers. We're looking to our customers, our distribution partners, and our community for people who can help. We hope to publish a detailed knowledge base this week to provide a centralized source of information.

We generally follow a two-phase approach. In the first phase, we work on developing, experimenting, and prototyping creative solutions to the following problems. After finding validated solutions, we will seek to scale the efforts by enabling our customers and partners through our global fleet of cloud-connected industrial printers.

We try to solve the following problems:

The specific initiatives we are currently working on (as of March 23, 2020):

Nasal swab

We're supporting a Markforged customer in developing nasal swabs for drive-through testing in California. It's critical to test and identify COVID-infected patients, as this is the first step in slowing the spread of the virus. By providing timely nasal swabs, we can increase testing, isolate those infected, and continue the fight.

Face protection

Markforged has developed a face shield design for use in hospitals and healthcare facilities to protect against COVID-19. The team will distribute the face shields to local healthcare facilities and has reached out to Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Lahey Health/Beth Israel Deaconess to understand their needs. We aim to have 200 to 250 face shields available for the Massachusetts groups by Tuesday, March 24, and are preparing to make the design available to our customers and partners for use in their local communities.

We are looking for experts

Markforged is also actively engaging with manufacturers and COVID-19 testing facilities to explore how we can optimize or scale their production capacity. We believe supporting manufacturers during this time will have the greatest impact. While 3D printing can't quickly scale to mass production volumes, it can accelerate a factory to produce more products, convert a production line from making perfumes to producing hand sanitizer, or provide a missing part to keep a stalled factory running.

Activation of our global network
With hundreds of industrial printers at our print farm in Massachusetts and more than 10,000 Markforged printers distributed to our customers worldwide, Markforged has the largest network of industrial 3D printers—and we must provide support during this time of need. We are in active discussions with our community and with several hospitals and healthcare providers—both in Boston and in other cities.

We provide our customers with a set of various .STL files. This allows you to provide practical support with your 3D printers. Please contact the relevant departments in your community.

Send an email to markforged@mark3d.de and we will send you the .STL files.