Customized design and 3D printing of face seal for an N95 filtering facepiece respirator

Filtering Facepiece Respirator (FFR) is the most common respirator users in the health care environment utilize for personal protection from outside particles. Comfort and fit are important while wearing an FFR. This paper proposes a novel technology to produce customized face seal design for improving the wearing comfort and fit of FFR wearers. In order to customize the design of face seals, we scanned the faces of three subjects using three-dimensional (3D) laser scanning method. A customized face seal for a 3M 8210 N95 FFR for each headform was designed using reverse engineering technique. Next, the face seal prototypes were fabricated with Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) plastic using the 3D printing method. A force sensing system based on Arduino Uno R3 was developed, and the force sensor of this system was inserted between the FFR and headform to measure contact pressure. Experimental results showed that the newly designed FFR face seal provided the subjects with an improved contact pressure.