The 3D Printing Industry Just Built a Stockpile in the Cloud

3D printing has been around for years, but this moment is different. The global 3D printing industry has come together to build millions of emergency medical gear for frontline workers in record time. The catch? All of its in the cloud. »Subscribe to Seeker! http://bit.ly/subscribeseeker »Watch more Focal Point | https://bit.ly/2s0cf7w » Visit our shop at http://shop.seeker.com As COVID-19 continues to sweep across the world, the global pandemic has created a major shortage of critical personal protective equipment (PPE) putting healthcare workers at risk as they work on the frontlines to treat patients and get the spread of coronavirus under control. This has led to a mad dash for PPE, and has thrown one tiny item in particular into the spotlight: the nasopharyngeal swab Nasopharyngeal swabs aren’t your average q-tips—they need to be long enough to reach the back of your throat, with synthetic fibers to effectively sweep for a sample to effectively test a patient for COVID-19. And doctors need millions of these swabs in order to test and contain the spread of COVID-19, but as the novel coronavirus continues to spread at an unprecedented rate, the demand for the swabs has been met with a major bottleneck in the global supply chain. Enter: A network of 3D printing companies and clinical researchers working to design, prototype, and mass 3D print swabs and other forms of PPE…and fast. In Part 1 of this Focal Point double feature, we speak with Gaurav Manchanda, Director, Healthcare at Formlabs and Elle Meyer, Director, Life Sciences at Carbon, to learn more about what this process looks like and how exactly this gear is being printed so rapidly. Watch to find out more. #PPE #COVID19 #3DPrinting #healthcareworkers #science #seeker #innovation #focalpoint Read More: The race to 3D-print 4 million COVID-19 test swabs a week https://www.fastcompany.com/90495332/the-race-to-3d-print-4-million-covid-19-test-swabs-a-week “The country needs tens of mill