{"id":17745,"date":"2020-04-07T19:01:52","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T11:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/blue-origin-uses-3-d-printers-to-make-visors-for-medical-face-shields-as-well-as-rocket-parts\/"},"modified":"2020-04-07T19:01:52","modified_gmt":"2020-04-07T11:01:52","slug":"blue-origin-uses-3-d-printers-to-make-visors-for-medical-face-shields-as-well-as-rocket-parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/blue-origin-uses-3-d-printers-to-make-visors-for-medical-face-shields-as-well-as-rocket-parts\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Origin uses 3-D printers to make visors for medical face shields as well as rocket parts"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Blue
A worker at Blue Origin\u2019s production facility in Kent, Wash., gets 3-D printed face shield visors ready for shipping. (Blue Origin via Twitter)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture isn\u2019t just turning out parts for rocket ships nowadays: It\u2019s also using 25 of its additive manufacturing machines to turn out 3-D printed visors for hospital face shields.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur machines are running 24 hours a day, seven days per week,\u201d Blue Origin said in a posting about the project.<\/p>\n

The visors serve as frames for the clear sheets of plastic that serve to protect the faces of health care workers as they treat COVID-19 patients.<\/p>\n

About 100 of the plastic visors are produced each day at Blue Origin\u2019s factory in Kent, Wash. They\u2019re shipped off to Stratasys, one of the company\u2019s supply partners, for distribution to hospitals in need around the country.<\/p>\n

Stratasys says 40,000 face shields are needed over the course of a week during the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/blueorigin\/status\/1247511810720194563<\/p>\n

\u201cThis initiative started organically within Blue as our engineers and machinists were looking for ways to help,\u201d Blue Origin said. \u201cThe Blue Origin team members currently supporting this effort work on our BE-4 engine development and are volunteering their time for this endeavor.\u201d<\/p>\n

To stay in line with social distancing requirements, only one person is allowed to be in the workspace at a time.<\/p>\n

Blue Origin isn\u2019t the only aerospace company contributing to the cause: Just to give a few examples, Boeing has been using 3-D printers at several of its facilities across the U.S. to manufacture face shields, Virgin Orbit has been making simplified ventilators, and Tesla and SpaceX are making ventilator valves for Medtronic. Even Zeva Aero, an eVTOL startup in Tacoma, is using 3-D printing to make reusable face masks for health care workers.<\/p>\n

Bezos\u2019 space venture is also experiencing the effects of the pandemic: As of Monday, three employees at Blue Origin\u2019s Kent factory and headquarters have tested positive for coronavirus. Other employees who may have come into close contact with the infected employees have been told to go into self-quarantine for 14 days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A worker at Blue Origin\u2019s production facility in Kent, Wash., gets 3-D printed face shield visors ready for shipping. (Blue Origin via Twitter) Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture isn\u2019t just turning out parts for rocket ships nowadays: It\u2019s also using 25 of its additive manufacturing machines to turn out 3-D printed visors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[509,2010,21],"class_list":["post-17745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-blue-origin","tag-coronavirus","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17745"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}