WGN News interviews Chad Mirkin about 3D printing face shields for hospitals

Hospitals are facing a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 outbreak. Chad Mirkin, James Hedrick, and David Walker from Azul 3D saw an opportunity to help meet this emerging need by 3D printing face shields with the HARP (high-area rapid printing) process developed at the IIN. This breakthrough technology can print pieces that are hard, elastic, and mechanically robust at a record throughput for the field of 3D printing.

WGN News interviewed Prof. Mirkin about the effort, which can produce 1,000 face shields per day. These can be used to protect health care workers as they treat patients. Within a few weeks, new printers are expected to raise the output to 2,000 face shields per day. These printers are 40x faster than the best commercial printers in the marketplace.