3D Printed Mask Shell with Holes for Stitching Cloth To

thingiverse

The idea with this face mask is to have it look like a regular old cloth mask, but seal better to the face (better protection, less glasses fog), essentially a respirator in disguise. It could be great for those wanting better protection but not wanting to stand out. Also, it offers a lot more filter surface area than a lot of DIY respirators out there and doesn't collapse to the face like most cloth masks. It's a shell with holes around the perimeter that you can stitch filter and regular cloth too. I also designed it so there is enough surface area between the holes and the grill such that a gasket can be attached to get a better seal. I designed it with Rhino 3D to fit my face (scanned my face with Scandy app and latest iPad true depth camera). If this project were to be taken further, I figure there could be a multi dimensional array of sizes to accommodate a variety of face shapes, or maybe even on the fly customization. A material could be selected that can be easily thermoformed to get a perfect fit. For now, anyone wanting to try this project could just scale my model and print with PLA to permit some thermoforming. For the filter cloth, I just used two layers of interfacing. I'd really like to get my hands on some decent filter cloth. If anyone out there knows a decent source in Canada without price gouging, please let me know. The knobs work great for the straps. Just cut a slit on each end of two straps and voila (with a bit of sizing effort). For the gasket, I just used some neoprene strip with adhesive backing. It does kinda come unstuck; some glue could help with that. The neoprene I have right now is fairly hard, so didn't help much with the seal and so I've removed it. I'll look for some softer neoprene. I think a more advanced approach would have a grove and then a silicone gasket that could tuck into it. The two big flaws with this mask concept are: 1. You can't just throw it in the wash like you can with a cloth mask. What you could do instead is have five of these and cycle them like they do at hospitals with respirators when running short (presumably virus doesn't survive that long on fabric). 2. If you do happen to get a great seal with a good filter installed, it's gonna get humid and stuffy in the mask pretty quick. There's a reason why respirators have exhalation valves and more valves only allowing incoming air to pass over the filter cartridges. Other than that, it can be inconvenient having a mask that doesn't fold. And when you talk it shifts on your face seeing as it's rigid. And stitching the cloth and filter (stiff filter cloth has to be folded to get 3D shape) takes quite a bit of time. On a side note, this project would have been a lot easier if I could have used dissolvable support material. I got a big blister pulling all the supports off, and broke some of the grill. All in all though, I think it is a decent solution for certain circumstances. The next step in the project would be to parametrically create more sizes to better accommodate a variety of face shapes and sizes.