Ford set to 3D print 100,000 face shields each week to help protect health care workers

Ford has partnered with 3M and GE Healthcare to assemble plastic face shields to distribute to emergency medical workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The company is currently producing 100,000 face shields a day at a production facility in Dearborn, Michigan.

The shields are made with just three pieces: a transparent plastic face covering, a small strip of sponge to rest against the forehead, and a plastic band to fasten the shield around a person’s head.

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Ford created an original design for a plastic face shield (pictured above) to protect medical workers after receiving a call for help from the Mayo Clinic

The foam is fixed to the shield with adhesive tape, and the plastic head band is stapled to the shield in a process that takes less than 10 seconds per shield.

Ford has two shifts of workers manually assembling the shields, one day crew and another night crew, to maintain maximum productivity.

The project started in mid-March, after the Mayo Clinic reached out to Ford to ask for assistance in sourcing personal protective equipment for medical workers, according to a report in the Detroit Free Press.

Ford convened a brainstorming session with D-Ford, a division focused on new designs and technologies.

‘We agreed to quickly do two things: Reach out to area hospitals directly and try to establish contact with people living with this shortage of material in that moment,’ D-Ford designer Will Brick said.

‘We wanted to look around and see what we could find out there in the world that might already exist or might have thought of — what’s already out there that we could leverage and put into production quickly, even if it was just temporary.’

The shield has just three components and takes less than 10 seconds to assemble by hand. Ford currently has two crews in Dearborn, Michigan assembling the face shields during day and night shifts 

Ford uses its own 3D printers to create the plastic components used for the face shield, which include a transparent plastic sheet to cover the face, a piece of sponge to rest against the forehead, and a plastic band to attach the shield to the head

They quickly settled on the idea of a face shield as both the most useful piece of equipment that they could begin making immediately, using  their in-house 3D printers to fabricate the components.

They made a few prototypes to show to local healthcare workers at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, then applied for emergency FDA approval, which they were granted in less than 48 hours.

Though the masks are simple to assemble, there was a learning curve for the production crew.

Ford us currently assembling 100,000 face shields a week to distribute to health care facilities around the country to protect medical workers from potential COVID-19 infection

The assembly process can be tedious for the production crews, but Ford claims they’re motivated by the urgency of the COVID-19 crisis. ‘This is a privilege,’ Ford’s Will Brick said

‘The first couple of days, it was a little rough until we got the hang of it,’ Brick said.

‘We have tables set up, and the area is marked off with red tape so we’re all six feet apart. We wear the masks we’re making while we work, and gloves. They’re lightweight and not hot.’

Assembling the shields is fast and can be mind-numbing, especially compared to the more complex car components they’re used to working with, but the urgency of the COVID-19 has given the team a new sense of purpose.  

‘This is a privilege,’ Brick said.

‘I never thought I”d be taking a box of face shields produced at Ford and deliver them to the hospital and see instantly in that moment the good that was done.’