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Comment by rhino369 | Hacker News Reader

>Given how many people are currently unemployed - how is it that we can fail to ramp up our own ability to produce this needed equipment? There is no shortage of labor.

Labor isn't the limiting factor. You need machines, raw materials, supply chains.

There isn't an AWS for N95 mask manufacturing.

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There are some surprisingly resourceful groups doing local manufacturing in incredibly inefficient, seemingly-unscalable ways and actually producing masks and eye-shields by the thousands.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/pdx3dplab/ https://team2471.org/ https://pdxhackerspace.org/

This is just in the Portland area. I assume there are similar efforts around the country and around the world.

Ideally this stuff should be made in factories rather than hundreds of bespoke 3d printers operated by volunteers, but if the need and motivation is there, a lot can be accomplished. Maybe it's not enough, but it's a lot more than nothing. And the longer this goes on, the more efficient the organization and manufacturing gets.

Normally the regular supply chain would handle all this, but if the supply chain is broken by hoarding behavior or the wrong kinds of active government intervention, the alternative is to bypass the usual market and use whatever local workforce volunteers or can be hired to make what's needed directly for the institutions in need.

N95 masks don't require 3D printers, they require melt-blown fabric. My girlfriend and I are chemical engineers, and took a look at the process that turns bulk, cheap, and widely available plastic (PE, PP, PC, etc) into melt blown fabric. She noted that it looked pretty nasty to her, and she wouldn't want to be involved with the startup for a new plant, and we regularly work with pretty nasty chemicals in large quantities. I was less hesitant, thinking it doesn't look that awful but I tend to be far less risk-averse. With proper safety precautions I think I'd be fine with it, but both of us feel that companies are extremely likely to fail at fully protecting the workers near the equipment from hazards. Here's an example of the machinery required: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=897yTI6wXWY

You need a lot of capital for a melt-blown fabric facility, and some specialized engineers. China and Taiwan managed to build new facilities of huge size very quickly - it can be done, but apparently much harder for the large American conglomerates to get off the ground as quickly. https://www.wfuv.org/content/covid-19-has-caused-shortage-fa...

If you can get >$10 million together, and a very dedicated and specialized team of engineers, plant operators, machinists, and businesspeople - you might be able to finish your factory before 3M's Rhode Island and Arizona plants, if you start right now. But you won't do it in a distributed way with a bunch of people with 3D printers.

However, it seems there's evidence that non N95 masks have some efficacy. Just regular old cotton clothing cloth. You could start an MLM/Amway/Mary-Kay/Avon/Vemma/Younique style thing to get out-of-work people to make these at home and sell them to friends and family.

Sinopec decided on Feb 24 to built a melt-blown fabric plant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9lchhBE7cE. It was operating on March 6. It took them 10-12 days to build, from scratch, a facility to produce 1.2 million N95 masks per day. One of my links above shows another facility built in 11+ days making 200,000 N95 masks per day.

At the start of the outbreak, Taiwan could product 100,000 N95 masks per day, but have built over 60 production lines, and now make enough melt blown fabric to product over 20 million N95 masks per day. Notably, Taiwan had a HUGE stockpile of masks, so even though making 100,000 masks per day wasn't enough for their population, they had enough in storage to last them while they built up their capacity. Now they make enough to send tons of masks the the USA every week.

USA (3M) decided to build melt-blown fabric facilities around March 23: https://www.powderbulksolids.com/news/Honeywell-Expands-N95-... and to a much smaller capacity. And none of the new lines in the USA are up and running yet. "Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, 3M was manufacturing about 50 million masks per month" ... "In its continuing effort to help meet demand, 3M says it is working to double its global N95 mask production numbers once again to 200 million units monthly." But they think that will take another YEAR to accomplish. Only 35 million N95 masks are currently made in the USA, by 3M or others. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/n95-mask-production-wont-mee...

Ideally, each citizen would have a new N95 mask for every day. We'll get to 1 mask per citizen per month, sometime around a year from now.

I think you are underestimating the productive potential of 4 million people. Machines can be built, raw materials can be gathered and supply chains can be organized. The alternative is to sit at home doing nothing until the equipment we need comes from China, which is more-or-less what our current leaders are recommending.

That is of course true, but doing all those things takes a lot of time. Building machines that make the raw materials for N95 masks takes weeks for the companies that already know how to do it. I imagine it is a much slower process if you first need to train people.

The old cliche is the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now.

We marvel sometimes at how quickly China raises cities from the dust seemingly out of nowhere in short time frames. In this very thread are reports of Chinese companies building entire factories to manufacture N95 masks in weeks, including brand new factories for the difficult melt-blown fabric material.

The US doesn't lack the ability, it lacks the will and the vision. The alternative sentiment to what I'm saying is "It's too hard, it will take too long and China can do it better so let's all wait it out at home doing nothing until they catch up enough to get us what we need". Why do people believe this? Where are the leaders saying anything else?

Hol' up, are you saying that there's a reason besides economics that the government might introduce protectionist trade measures to keep some critical manufacturing domestic for use during an emergency when you cannot trust your supply chains which come from hostile -- or even friendly -- nations?

It's funny because this was a U.S. conservative talking point going back as long as I can remember (for me that's the mid/late 90s). There's even an episode of The Office (U.S.) where this point of view is lampooned (Oscar to Michael: "Wouldn't you say that the services sector is much more relevant than manufacturing?"). Never thought I'd see it expressed openly on HN, and with upvotes!

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