Customized facial mask - generic part

thingiverse

This weekend I learned that face masks used with COVID-19 patients must always sit snugly on the face to ensure a safe filtering effect. Already, many great ideas exist for face masks or shields, but none for custom face masks that perfectly fit an individual, so here is my approach: You scan your face with Apple's Face ID, subtract it from the CAD model of a generic facial mask, and 3D print the result. First prints showed a comfortable fit due to the custom fit, a large contact area. Also, the masks are pretty lightweight. I need help with several things: - I read a study on household filter material and decided to go with a cotton pad. It is much denser than a woven cotton T-shirt or even cotton blend or dish towel, so the filtration is very likely better than those materials. Breathability was also named as a factor in the article, so I tested it and while it is not as easy as breathing through a dish towel it is still easy enough to do for at least a couple of hours. The cotton pads are cheap (0.02€ each), disposable, and the print can be customized to the ones available at your nearest drugstore, so no need for cutting, sewing etc. Does anyone have official data on the filtering capabilities of cotton pads? - How many 3D printers do we have around the world? And does this approach make sense at all? - To scan your face you need an App. I used this one to export the STL file. How do we get it into the App Store? https://github.com/heinrisch/faceid-to-stl - As you can clearly see, I am no designer and there is lots of room to improve. The procedure to combine the mask STL and a Face ID STL to make a custom mask only takes a few minutes (except for the 3D print itself). Printing time on my machine is about 3h. If you want to make a custom mask or want to modify the design for another filter material, here's what to do: 1. Install meshmixer. 2. Deploy iOS App to your iPhone (X or later, needs Face ID) https://github.com/13-0-46/faceid-to-stl with X-Code. 3. Scan your face and open the STL file with Meshmixer. 4. Add your own file or my STL file of a mask to it. Do not scale! (Sometimes scaling by factor 1000 is needed) 5. Use "Transform" (t) to move the face into the mask on the right position 6. Use Boolean Difference Tool to subtract the face from the mask. 7. Inspect for errors 8. Export and 3D print it