Open-Source Project Spins Up 3D-Printed Ventilator Validation Prototype In Just One Week (techcrunch.com) 48
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: In a great example of what can happen when smart, technically-oriented people come together in a time of need, an open-source hardware project started by a group including Irish entrepreneur Colin Keogh and Breeze Automation CEO and co-founder Gui Calavanti has produced a prototype ventilator using 3D-printed parts and readily available, inexpensive material. The ventilator prototype was designed and produced in just seven days, after the project spun up on Facebook and attracted participation from over 300 engineers, medical professionals and researchers.
The prototype will now enter into a validation process by the Irish Health Services Executive (HSE), the country's health regulatory body. This will technically only validate it for use in Ireland, which ironically looks relatively well-stocked for ventilator hardware, but it will be a key stamp of approval that could pave the way for its deployment across countries where there are shortages, including low-income nations. The group behind the ventilator also recently changed the focus of their Facebook community, renaming the group from the Open Source Ventilator Project to the Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies community. They're looking at expanding their focus to finding ways to cheaply and effectively build and validate other needed equipment, including protective gear like masks, sanitizer and protective face guards for front-line healthcare workers.
The prototype will now enter into a validation process by the Irish Health Services Executive (HSE), the country's health regulatory body. This will technically only validate it for use in Ireland, which ironically looks relatively well-stocked for ventilator hardware, but it will be a key stamp of approval that could pave the way for its deployment across countries where there are shortages, including low-income nations. The group behind the ventilator also recently changed the focus of their Facebook community, renaming the group from the Open Source Ventilator Project to the Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies community. They're looking at expanding their focus to finding ways to cheaply and effectively build and validate other needed equipment, including protective gear like masks, sanitizer and protective face guards for front-line healthcare workers.
Any lawsuits yet? (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps they should include that the ventilator can only be used on non-lawyer persons.
Re: Any lawsuits yet? (Score:1)
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The courts should allow the infringement suits to take place ONLY if the executives and lawyers
of the corporation involved accept experimental vaccines and tested with live virus exposure.
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It's less of a patent issue and more of a legal liability issue.
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It's less of a patent issue and more of a legal liability issue.
It really is. Right now there's a panic, but in a year or two: "My uncle died from all of these irresponsible people that forced this broken, usable, and untested product on him when he was too weak to resist. Oh woe is me; where's my money?"
They all need to have a simple liability form:
We don't at all know what we're doing. You take all and full responsibility for using this untested product. No years-long product testing has been done. This product may not help you, may very well harm you in som
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The lawyers might have quite a problem with that. The device is basically an automatic ambu bag squeezer. That's actually an excellent way to do it, especially given the considerable time pressure.
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I have no idea who actually makes ventilators commercially, but I can almost hear their patent infringement lawyers gearing up from here. Money matters far more than human lives to them.
1. There is very little innovative tech in a ventilator. If there were any patents they have long expired.
2. I would not use 3d printed parts in a ventilator. You want the absolute minimum of Butadiene and other residual products from polymerisation leaking into the air/oxygen stream which goes into patients lungs. These unfortunately are unavoidable with the current generation of 3d printed stuff.
AMBU BAG COMPRESSION (Score:5, Informative)
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Call on every home enthusiast to start printing. Sure, some of their equipment won't be up to standards and won't print usable equipment, but if it's something that can be printed and easily tested, it's better than nothing. This is war, and if I'm a patient, I'd rather take an untested but "probably will get the job done" piece of equipment than be left to die because of a fear of a lawsuit.
What will it take to ramp up traditional production? I know we want to say "we can't rely on random volunteers" - bu
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There is at least one more difference, and the third is also rather important - particularly in a hospital setting.
Filtration on a CPAP/BiPAP is rather simple, and only cleans dust and pollen out of the air being inhaled. A ventilator also has exhalation filtration designed to prevent the spread of pathogens.
It would take significant retooling of the CPAP/BiPAP masks to incorporate additional filtration since they basically just release exhaled breath directly into the room right at the mask.
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If no certified ventilator was available, I can only imagine attempting to make one if she would have died without it anyway will be covered under the same sorts of good Samaritan laws that general public CPR/first aid responders are.
Or: to put it another way: If I, an untrained or minimally trained member of the public, attempt first aid and fail, I'm not liable for the failure. Not even if I was doing it wrong, as long as I was attempting to help. I don't really see the difference in this situation.
Just c
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The CPAP idea is cool. Would it just be a software update?
I have a CPAP (with 2 older ones, one of which I swear is a small inverse vacuum cleaner.) The NEWEST one is almost self-aware and connects home via cell towers and can be updated from the techs' office w/o me going in. There IS a USB port, but I think it's restricted to only providing data, not accepting commands (but that could easily be a software restriction.)
An as ANALOGY, I heard that the "lungs stage" of infection was akin to hitting your thumb with a hammer: it swells up for a bit. Now do that
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I thought the problem was constriction of the air passages (which are also really tiny) in the lungs, not the blood vessels. But I don't know for sure. If it is the blood vessels I don't see how ventilators can help.
Re: AMBU BAG COMPRESSION (Score:2)
I read that it's the pus in your lungs from your body fighting the infection that blocks blood vessels taking in oxygen and removing carbon dioxide.
I also learned that to much oxygen is harmful which is why it's prescribed by a doctor.
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It's not the passages, it's the alveoli... millions of tiny air sacs in your lungs at the "ends" of the tiny air passages where the actual oxygen exchange occurs. The immune response causes these to become irritated and fill with pus and fluid to try and expel the source of irritation. And in the mean time, you die from lack of oxygen.
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Yes that sounds more like what I thought. I think the GP was in error when he said it was "capillaries, which are just big enough for a single blood cell to pass thru" were what were blocking. Then again reading his post, it is possible he was trying to do an analogy to swelling when your finger is hit by a hammer, and did not make it clear that it was not blood vessels in the lung.
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Re:checking the past (Score:1)
In the "checking the past" department, I was thinking about building an iron lung from a vacuum cleaner and one of those big cardboard tubes that home depot sells as concrete forms.... Cardboard lung!
mod parent up (Score:2)
unless those are patented by MIT already...
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There are probably several commercial 3D printing houses in Australia that might be willing to help and would probably have considerable capacity. You could also reach out to the maker community. Injection molding is faster once it's ramped up, but it takes a while before the first part comes off of the line.
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Hi,
I'm in a team working on Ambu Bag compression in Australia. We and other teams all around the world are racing to get this done as quickly as possible. We are also working on converting CPAP machines into Ventilators. There isn't enough 3D printing capacity to ramp up mass production. We need to use traditional engineering and ramp up as quickly as possible. 3D printing is perfect for rapid prototyping however.
The supply chock was accompanied by a demand chock weeks ago, industry (unless they're making tp or ravioli) are just building stock. Anywhere there are installations that meets spec is a viable supplier. I'd reach out to universities (my local is already in the business of making hand sanitizer) and makers of auto parts. Also the makers of the 3d printers themselves probably has a good idea where they went.
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Depending on the part, creating a mold and getting a cast of it would provide a much faster way to produce parts. For limited runs (hundreds, not thousands), it can be a reasonable way to produce parts, if you can get enough resin.
Way better than "strategic reserve" method (Score:2)
Aside from not having a library of designs already tested and approved, is it realistic for society in general to lean on 3D printing to meet global emergency equipment needs?
It sounds far more effective to maintain a strategic reserve of printer input materials than already fully built equipment. We've already found it pretty obvious that the US 'strategic reserves' of ventilators is laughably small in comparison to our current need.
At the minimum, at least we could keep the designs library around and regu
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Way better... if it works, and all the parts can be built on the printers available or obtained readily. The economy is full of slack resources, particularly engineering talent, so there's no reason not to try.
The idea of adapting CPAPs is an almost perfect problem for someone with a 3D printer.
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That makes a lot of sense. Especially since you can't know in advance what items may suddenly become very important so you either have to stockpile them all or just have the files on hand and stockpile filament.
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A better argument might be that while we only have an insufficient number of ventilators, the strategic reserve probably has a huge number of something that is totally useless for coronavirus (somebody more clever than me could probably identify what that is). If instead there was a strategic reserve of 3D printers and printer input materials, then in theory *all* the reserve could be turned into ventilators if needed.
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3D printers are cool, but they're not everything you need. Where 3D printing really shines is in making things you can't buy at your local hardware store. A complicated joint, connector or something with irregular shape would be a good example. As far as I can tell, the majority of a ventilator is things like tubes and pipes - and those are way better pre-made.
I can't find actual design files off hand, but the picture of the device suggests maybe half a dozen 3d printed parts attached to stuff you bought fr
Wakeup call (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of greedy self interested corporations are about to find out that the vast majority really don't give a shit about their patents. They are created only by government fiat to serve a social purpose. That purpose is a balance of various factors, and that balance can change at any time.
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So confusing to read as a German. (Score:2)
Ventilator is our word for a fan. As in: The rotating propeller thing that pushes cool air at you in the summer.
Handy is our word for a mobile phone.
A Shooting is a photo shooting.
And a Body is a spandex suit.
"Mr. al-Boundy was found unconscious at a shooting, wearing a body, after having used his handy emergency feature. He had to be kept alive by a machine made of his own fans. When he woke up, the TV was running and the ventilators were cheering as Bananarami shot his goal! -- Shoeshiner county news repo
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Well at least, unlike the Dutch, you don't talk about strapping bacon on a cat.
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Same thing here, and looking at the tfa it didn't help me much further, luckily the mighty wikipedia makes everything clear;
A medical ventilator (or simply ventilator in context) is a machine designed to provide mechanical ventilation by moving breathable air into and out of the lungs, to deliver breaths to a patient who is physically unable to breathe, or breathing insufficiently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Remember Iron Lung!! (Score:2)
There's absolutely no excuse why we can't produce millions of units within months, with regular manufacturing.
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If you're trying to not compound the spread of the virus around the hospital... ventilators need to be rather more complicated than that.
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If you're trying to not compound the spread of the virus around the hospital... ventilators need to be rather more complicated than that.
Should be plenty of asymptomatic medical staff available rsn, set up a field hospital and do your best would be my advice.
We've had ventilators for 80 years (Score:2)
I'm not sure the high tech route is necessarily the best, quickest. Modern rapid prototyping and lean production sure, but I think we need the design to be KISS. A back to basics approach. The first ventilators were entirely mechanical and used in surgery in the 1930s, well before we had ICs. We need a establish simple design with modern materials and components.
Over-engineering is the nemesis of speedy delivery.
UK Government (Score:2)
I'll admit up front I'm not a fan of the current UK government or their complacency during the early stages of the Coronavirus; however they are addressing the issue of the ventilator shortage in a constructive manner.
On Monday they instigated an emergency procurement plan [bbc.co.uk] for ventilators. This morning the Health secretary announced that the first prototypes are being tested today. That is pretty good going and they type of action that is needed. He also announced that they will be buying up all the ventila
The most useless group ever (Score:2)
Basically a bunch of self-serving idiots trying to say that PROPER doctors and ENGINEERS don't know how to make or use a mask. And infintely 3d printing this venturi effect valve that NOT A SINGLE SOUL know what it's for, what machine it belongs to and even if their local hospital has such a machine or even needs a replacement valve for the one that's currently broken. What a waste of bandwidth.
Could this also lower the costs of CPAP machines? (Score:1)
The current costs of CPAP machines is anywhere from $850.00 to $3000.00 the device is used to treat sleep apnea. If the basic design of a ventilator is circuits , sensors, backup power, audible alarm, dual compressors, built-in redundancy. The hacker spaces around the world could figure out the wiring. What about those algorithms that can model the best shape for weight distribution on a quad copter. The best shape for lungs might be something nature has already invented. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
problematic (Score:2)