State-of-Art of Face Shields Manufactured Through Additive Manufacturing, Issues and Mitigation Approaches

Abstract

Recently, coronavirus has caused great damages to the entire human race without any discrimination. Almost every country got affected due to this invisible enemy. Many frontline health warriors are helping communities and countries to protect from this deadly disease. Due to this pandemic spread, face shields are recommended as a safety measure. Even WHO (World Health Organization) also recommended to use face shields as a protective measure. Due to this worldwide emergency, there have been many fears of shortages in protective equipment’s like masks, face shields and other medical devices. In such a circumstance, additive manufacturing turned into supplementary manufacturing process to fulfil the touchy needs and to facilitate the wellbeing around the world. Manufacturing objects through 3D printing is also known as additive manufacturing or rapid prototyping [1].

This study is primarily disclosing the present state of art with respect to role of additive manufacturing in constructing face shields due to coronavirus. This study is disclosing various type of materials used for additive manufacturing, methods used for their sanitation and application areas [2–4]. This study found that face shields manufactured through additive manufacturing approach were lacking in the technology intervention. Moreover, it is also found that anthropometric dimensions were also ignored while manufacturing such face shields. This study also found that majority of these face shields were manufactured for radiologists, anaesthetists, maxillofacial surgeons and frontline health professionals. Only few studies manufactured face shields for the patients. The unique contribution of this study is to propose a technological advanced face shield by introducing electronic sensors into it and that too by considering anthropometric dimensions of Indian male and female head size [5].