Keeping the damn things in place

February 12, 2021 5:55 AM

Boosting face mask efficacy: a cheap 3D printable solution. Keeps potentially contaminated droplets INSIDE the mask ... and keeps your glasses from steaming up too. Great for people for whom N95 metal bands don't work as advertised. Best of all, no one appears to be trying to make bank out of this (yet).

Announcements about mass manufacture and other mask frame options at the Twitter feed of FullPlasticScientist. Dr. John Campbell demos the technology around 1:30 here.

posted by Sheydem-tants (25 comments total)

Haven't used a mask brace though they seem so necessary. I have also seen some coverage of Fix the Mask, which makes one that you can buy.
posted by little onion at 6:08 AM on February 12, 2021

Fix the Mask also offers a DIY version. They've done a thorough job of testing the efficacy.
posted by pinochiette at 6:10 AM on February 12, 2021 [3 favorites]

Haven't used a mask brace though they seem so necessary. I have also seen some coverage of Fix the Mask, which makes one that you can buy.

We really, really need not to rely on a single source. Ideally public health agencies will take these ideas and run with them.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 6:16 AM on February 12, 2021 [2 favorites]

Plenty of small fabricators and makerspaces etc spun up production this spring for everything from face shields to masks to gowns. This kind of device is exactly the sort of thing these scale of operations can step in to make as needed. With the design out on thingiverse, I expect there will be even more tuning of the design for different face shapes etc.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:00 AM on February 12, 2021

I love these designs from the Early Covidian Period that are all “use thick 20mm elastic” (= unobtanium now) and yeah wow really effective … disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer “… does not have regulatory approval … No representation, promise, express warranty or implied warranty concerning the suitability of these flat pack face covering kits for any medical or personal protective use”
posted by scruss at 7:08 AM on February 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

These look decent as general workshop masks, too.
posted by regularfry at 7:20 AM on February 12, 2021

I had huge glasses fogging problems at the beginning, but I settled on a valved construction N95 (3M coolflow, I happened to have a box around) with a cloth mask over it. Double masking before it was cool, but it's comfortable enough and has entirely stopped the fogging.
posted by true at 7:30 AM on February 12, 2021 [5 favorites]

A lot of places are insisting on double-masking if one of the masks is valved.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:45 AM on February 12, 2021 [3 favorites]

I suppose one way to distract from the problem of glasses fogging up is to wear a huge black bar over one's eyes.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:53 AM on February 12, 2021 [9 favorites]

problem of glasses fogging up is to wear a huge black bar over one's eyes

Heh, it's not like we were warned about this in decades past...
posted by rozcakj at 7:57 AM on February 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

not free but well documented and well tested->
https://openstandardindustries.com/
posted by danjo at 8:42 AM on February 12, 2021

Best of all, no one appears to be trying to make bank out of this (yet).

I'm curious what you mean by this, Sheydem-tants. I personally don't have a 3D printer, so unless someone is selling these (making bank?) then it's inaccessible to me. Unless I want to spend a few hundred (and up) on a printer, sourcing raw materials, and getting all the software lined up to begin printing them myself.

(Disbursed, at-home manufacturing is cool and all, but it isn't particularly accessible and thus doesn't scale.)
posted by c0nsumer at 9:09 AM on February 12, 2021 [4 favorites]

3D printers are HYPER inaccessible - $$$. Metafilter always seems to talk about them like oh hey go whip this up.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:45 AM on February 12, 2021 [12 favorites]

I've always had a fondness for the Badger Seal mask brace, although I've never used it. DIY, $1 in materials.

Absurd that the CDC has:

- figured out mask braces work after they've been around for six months
- realized that they're not really available through normal channels
- pivoted to "double masking" without making any clear guidelines how/why they work other than "it's common sense"
posted by meowzilla at 10:07 AM on February 12, 2021 [4 favorites]

Both of my local public libraries have "makerspaces" with 3D labs, and have been experimenting with different face mask constructs. The Salt River Project in Arizona has been using an iPad to create 3D face scans in order to make custom mask braces. Also keep in mind that "[t]here’s a very real chance the novel coronavirus could become endemic in the human population, much like influenza. If so, we could be living with COVID-19 for a long time."
posted by mecran01 at 10:43 AM on February 12, 2021 [3 favorites]

NYC Makes PPE has a page of designs for printable, laserable, and sewable PPE. They're on the simpler end, as it's mostly from the March/April wave, when the emphasis was on what could be made quickly, cheaply, and at useful scale.

(3d printers are cheaper than gaming consoles or last-gen smartphones. They're often freely or cheaply available to use at makerspaces, schools and libraries. Kindly don't blast them as "HYPER inaccessible"; a lot of people worked very hard to make sure that wasn't the case.)
posted by phooky at 10:57 AM on February 12, 2021 [3 favorites]

I said: pivoted to "double masking" without making any clear guidelines how/why they work other than "it's common sense"

I totally stand corrected! Mass media just chooses (and then repeats ad nauseum) the most clickbaity pull quote.

The actual CDC website says about double masking:

Wear one disposable mask underneath a cloth mask.
- The second mask should push the edges of the inner mask against your face.
[...]
[Don't] Combine two disposable masks
[Don't] Combine a KN95 mask with any other mask.
posted by meowzilla at 11:02 AM on February 12, 2021 [3 favorites]

N95 DIYers are a fantastic bunch of people, with the kind of enthusiasm and eagerness to help that used to abound in internet communities but has kind of fallen off in the last fifteen years. I told this story a while ago over on MetaTalk, but this seems like an excellent time to share it again.

I interviewed at a certain well-known internet search company a couple months ago. Their interviews are notoriously awful for a bunch of reasons, not least of which is that they ask you a bunch of questions whose actual answer is "I would go look up the answer on the internet, and wouldn't try to reinvent the wheel by solving it myself because that would be floridly insane and dangerous," but that they want you to solve anyway. The interviews also last an entire day and are grueling and exhausting and generally awful, but there you go.

When the big day came, my first session was on a video call with one of their senior devs. The guy was a delight--he's a compiler guy who works on an open-source language that apparently has corporate sponsorship. I'm a compiler guy by training, though I haven't worked on them in years, and we hit it off immediately. I crushed the questions he threw at me, and we finished with some time to spare. We got to talking about the state of the world, and somehow got onto the subject of masks and mask protocol. He totally geeked out on this, telling me about the University of Minnesota's DIY N95 mask program and how he's been working on making enough of them in his own workshop to keep his family in stock, and to donate any excess supply to local aid groups needing high-quality PPE. This sounded really cool, and we were getting into the gritty details of it when our time ran out. He promised to email me some links, and I rushed off to the next interview segment.

A few days passed, and I didn't get an email from him. No big deal, I thought, it's the holidays, and people are busy. Then, about a week after we talked, a FedEx box showed up at my door with a return address I didn't recognize. Inside were:

• cloth fasteners
• wooden struts
• a container of custom-made filtration material that was apparently designed as a diesel engine filter
• a printed and stapled construction guide
• three printed graphs of particulate matter permeability for various fabrics
• several pages of printed notes about design considerations that the guy had assembled
• a handwritten note on a sheet of looseleaf paper, saying "good luck on the interview/application. I of course cannot say a single thing more than just 'good luck'."

I'm not sure how he found my address, because it wasn't on my CV. This is by far the best thing I have ever gotten in the mail. And the recruiter called later that day to tell me I got the job.
posted by Mayor West at 11:21 AM on February 12, 2021 [31 favorites]

I appreciate that these use the back of the head strap style, which is infinitely preferable to ear loops.
posted by jason_steakums at 11:23 AM on February 12, 2021

Why does the CDC say you shouldn't combine a KN95 mask with any other mask?
posted by arcolz at 1:08 PM on February 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

A KN95 is likely your best-fitting and best-filtering mask.

Putting another mask underneath is likely to compromise the seal, and air will just want to go around the KN95 instead of through it.

Putting a (looser) mask on top of a well-fitting mask doesn't do much other than waste masks, unless you're a healthcare worker and are actually using the easily-disposed mask on top as basically a way to keep the real filtering mask clean. Or to cover a valve.
posted by meowzilla at 1:51 PM on February 12, 2021 [3 favorites]

3D printers are HYPER inaccessible - $$$. Metafilter always seems to talk about them like oh hey go whip this up.

A Creality Ender 3 is well under $300, and a kilogram of filament runs about $20. Those aren't "impulse purchase" territory, but they're well into what a lot of people would pay to get started with a new craft if they felt so inclined.

Yes, you can spend huge amounts of money on 3D printing, but that's true of every hobby.
posted by jackbishop at 5:00 PM on February 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

I have an Ender 3 myself but it's very much a luxury purchase I'm lucky to have, and it does require a level of technical ability and information literacy that can't be taken for granted. I think it's a rewarding hobby but the accessibility certainly comes with some qualifiers.
posted by jason_steakums at 5:35 PM on February 12, 2021 [6 favorites]

The other thing about Creality printers like the Ender 3 is that they need tuning to get decent results out of, and that takes time. If you're worried about accessibility, you've got to cater for people who are time-poor as well as money-poor.

If you want a plug-and-play printer that doesn't need much setup, you're looking at something two or three times the price.
posted by regularfry at 12:16 PM on February 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

Kindly don't blast them as "HYPER inaccessible"

I've seen them as low as $200 for smaller ones. Even the well-regarded Prusa is $700 as a kit. Not cheap but considering what people pay for smart phones, not out of the realm of reason.
posted by drstrangelove at 4:04 AM on February 15, 2021