Scramp (Screw clamp anchor for N95 mask elastic, fabric, etc.) by carlthingy

Last crawled date: 4 years, 1 month ago

Medical staff dealing with the coronavirus pandemic have been having to re-use fabric face masks and wear them for extended periods. The elastic gets tired and stretched, and some have been asking if the 3D printing community could come up with anything to help. This is the first gadget I came up with. Y'can use it to clamp the elastic to hold a loop in it making it shorter - probably overkill for that as you could also just tie a knot in it, though this would be easier to remove and adjust. (However, one of those sleeping bag drawstring toggles would be quicker again, and I doubt they are in especially short supply).
Should the straps on a mask break off at the mask, you could use this to secure elastic to the corner of a fabric mask without making any holes in it, because it clamps very securely - the elastic in the picture is an elastic band, stronger than typical face mask elastic (I haven't any masks to compare, but from memory, the elastic on them is softer and slimmer). The fabric in the picture is synthetic microfibre cleaning cloth, thin and rather slippery. Even on a non-hemmed bit, this thing held on while I stretched the elastic pretty vigorously.
This is fairly small - feel free to scale it but much smaller and it'd be pretty fiddly. Also, if the thread comes out too stiff, narrow the jaws part a fraction in just the sideways direction.
With my extremely slow printer settings, each part takes under 10m to print at 0.12mm layer height, but I think you could use 0.16mm or 0.2mm without trouble, and the speed could certainly be jacked up dramatically from my settings. Would probably suit the UV laser liquid bath resin printer style, though works just fine in PLA.
It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, if you print anything to send to healthcare professionals, make sure you don't increase their risk - check out their goods in and quarantine procedures, maybe boil the hell out of stuff before sending it, etc.