The Police Chief of Milwaukee put out a statement March 20th for businesses in the Milwaukee area to donate any Personal Protection Equipment (PPEs) they could due to supply shortages.

MPD’s Detective Eric Draeger’s gave a call to us at GSC shortly after the 20th, for design assistance in hopes of using 3D printing to combat the coronavirus and COVID-19.

Responding to COVID-19 Police Mask Need with SOLIDWORKS & HP 3D Printing

The force needed to ensure they had enough respirator face mask filters to protect its officers and meet demand. They had masks, but not enough filters to adequately supply the masks and their officers.

It took creative thinking to find filters that weren’t depleted in stores or online. Using filters different than the standard issue involved re-designing and reverse engineering the force’s respirator mask filter canister in SOLIDWORKS.

After sourcing new filters from Milwaukee Tool and O-rings from Bradley Corp, GSC’s 3D printing expert Aaron Niedermann quickly started prototyping an adapter for the filters, since they are a different size from the force’s normal supply.

He reverse engineered the filter canisters in SOLIDWORKS and began testing prototype parts on our HP 3D printers. Aaron had a working prototype within a few hours.

Watch the Design Process at High-Speed in SOLIDWORKS

If you like this story, and would like to learn more about Detective Draeger, GSC, and the behind-the-scenes of this project, you can view our blog, “We Needed Masks” – GSC 3D Prints Hundreds of Parts for Milwaukee Police Protective Masks with HP Technology.”