TL;DR: If you are helping with the Covid efforts and have Smoothie troubles contact us as soon as possible and we'll do everything we can to help you as a priority.

Turns out, all those 3D printers are for more than printing Poke-people. Who knew ??

As the global Coronavirus pandemic progresses, some hospitals and care centers find themselves short on items essential to protect healthcare personnel and their patients from infection.

It also happens that many people these past few years ( that's you guys ) have been learning to do 3D printing and other machine fabrication, many have machines at home, and it turns out that some essential hardware is in fact quite easy to manufacture using these DIY 3D printers.

And so, where I live, the local 3D printing community has manufactured thousands of face masks in just a few days, that have been life-savers for the local hospitals. As far as I can gather, this is happening pretty much everywhere, all around the world.

If it's not happening close to you, it's likely it will happen soon, so get that dust off your 3D printer.

Wherever you are, it's likely your local Fablab or Hackerspace is all over this right now, so contacting them is probably the fastest way to get started, and to learn how you can best be helpful.

Otherwise, social media seems to be the way to coordinate efforts. Here's a list of “main” social media groups per country:

• France ( Makers contre le Covid )
• United Kingdom ( 3D Crowd )
• United Kingdom ( Print for victory )
• France ( Covid3D JOGL/Assistance Publique Hopitaux de Paris ) : this is if you have design know-how, and want to help design OS projects that help with the crisis )
• Canada
• Slovakia ( thanks Brano )
• Please add your country.

There seems to be a lot of files flying around. If you don't have a fablab coordinating what needs to be printed and where it needs to be sent, it might make sense for you to contact your local hospital to ask what they *need* you to print, and where to deposit it.

Here are some files that seem to be commonly used. These are only examples, there are many more, feel free to add links :

• Prusa face shield, for 3D printing
• Comments for the v1 of the shield has links to versions for laser cutting. Laser cutting face shields seem to be able to produce much larger quantities of face masks, much faster, so if you have a laser cutter, it's likely to be possible to help a lot with it.
• The Prusa portal for all things covid.
• A list of ongoing projects.

If you are using your machine to help with the Coronavirus, and your machine runs into trouble, Contact Us:

• We will waive the usual “let's figure out what's wrong before sending a replacement board” process, so you get the machine back up and running as fast as possible.
• We'll send you a replacement board even if you own a counterfeit and have been mean to the project
• We can help even if your problem isn't strictly Smoothie-related, we have lots of spare parts for 3D printers, laser cutters and CNC mills, and lots of know-how to help you troubleshoot issues.

( note: this applies even if your board isn't a smoothieboard. and this is valid until I run out of boards at home, I've sent 6 so far (as of April 8 ), I still have a good dozen )

No matter what, please stay safe, stay home, keep a check on family and friends via the Internet, and see you all on the other side of the tunnel.

Cheers.

– The Smoothie team.