3D-printed respirator valve conceived of in the early days of COVID-19 when hospitalizations were soaring and the supply chain was failing. Credit: Massimo Temporelli’s Facebook.
by Michelle Taylor
In the wee hours of Friday, March 13, 2020, physicist Massimo Temporelli received a frantic call from a journalist he knew. She told Temporelli, founder of a digital fabrication lab in Italy, that a hospital in Brescia was running out of the valves used in patients’ respirators and the supplier could not provide them quickly enough to stave off imminent death for some of the patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
Given Temporelli’s expertise, she asked if it was possible to 3D-print the valves instead. Temporelli didn’t know the answer at that moment, but he was going to find out.
After many, many calls and false starts, Temporelli finally connected with Cristian Fracassi, the founder of startup Isinnova. Fracassi’s company was based in Brescia and had a 3D printer, which he agreed to bring directly to the hospital. Within six hours of connecting, Fracassi and colleague Alessandro Ramaioli began manufacturing valves.
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