Covid19 magnetic face mask clips for one-time material and fabric

thingiverse

The day is April 26th, 2020. Germany, along with the rest of the world, finds itself in the midst of the Covid19 pandemic. As of tomorrow morning, wearing a mask that covers both mouth and nose will become mandatory in Bavaria for shopping, public transportation, and other places where people gather. This measure was taken to maintain the relatively low number of new infections per day (currently around 2000 now in total for Germany, down from around 6000 just recently) while still allowing some sense of normalcy after a relatively harsh shutdown of the country. People are encouraged to create their own masks. And this is where this design comes into play. I was looking for a simple clip that would allow me to use one-time materials like those found in kitchen rolls as a mask, rather than reusing a mask that had been worn before. Let's face it, our leaders advise us to wash our masks frequently, but people will be tempted to reuse a mask again and again, which is absolutely not a good idea. So offering this design for either one-time filter materials or exchangeable pieces of fabric may help fight this virus. I was inspired by this design: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4218338 However, there were several aspects that did not meet my requirements: Exchanging the filter material must be extremely simple and fast, otherwise people will hesitate to do it. All kinds of materials must be usable, not just paper but also cotton (which is recommended in Germany), so the mechanism must work without punching a hole into the material. Even without punching a hole into the material, it must be well held even if some force is applied from the rubber bands. So I designed this thing from scratch, using a gripper with saw-tooth surfaces and 8x3mm round neodymium magnets to hold it together. The guiding pins are outside of the area where the material is held, which avoids the need for holes in the material. Regarding how to fold the material and how to wear the mask, I would like to refer to the excellent original post (see link above) which has a nice video that explains everything. It seems to be clear that the mask will mostly protect others from exhaled droplets, rather than protecting the person who wears the mask. But if we all protect each other, then everyone is protected, and that sounds rather sensible to me. Have fun printing, use it responsibly, and don't give up your other safety precautions! May the day of our victory over this virus come very soon.