The urgency to tackle the increasing shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) has given rise to numerous heartwarming initiatives from people and companies from all backgrounds to step forward and come up with solutions. And architects and designers are not falling behind in this honorable quest.
Architecture studio Foster + Partners has designed a laser-cut face shield to protect health workers from coronavirus, which can be quickly disassembled and sanitized so that it can be reused after wearing.
The masks are fabricated from plastic using a laser cutting machine, as Foster + Partners believes this is faster than 3D-printing components. Each face shield is made out of three parts, which can be cut within 30 seconds and assembled in under a minute. Using one cutting machine, the designers can manage to cut and assemble 1,000 face shields in a single day.
These masks have now been distributed to health workers in London to test, while the design and material specifications have been made open-source, enabling others with a laser cutter to go on and fabricate the model.
