Thank you!
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Someone posted in the forum last week that they had talked their local Home Depot into donating acrylic for ear savers. Sounds like it could be worth a try.
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Great. Iāve got a dozen sheets of 1/8 (or 3mm). Do you care what color it is?
There was no option in the sign-up for between 5 and 40 sheets. I was looking to sign up for 1000 so had to decide between 5 sheets (385) or āup to 40 sheetsā. Iāll sign-up again after the first batch, but you can match me up to 1000 or so. If colors are allowed, I can do more.
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At 77 ear savers per each 12x20 sheet of acrylic, thatās just under 13,000 sheets to get to one million ear savers. Thatās a lot of acrylic.
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Yes
Has anyone thought of putting together a paper fold box for a set quantity? Iāve never made them, but it looks like a score line for folds and a few cuts would make that easy.
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FWIW, 12 stacks of 15 fit almost perfectly in a small, flat rate USPS box. which also happens to be convenient, if you ship.
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Okay, so apparently making paper fold boxes is much easier than I expected. Here is a design that holds 25 perfectly.
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How are you getting 77 on a 12 x20? I only get 45ā¦
Hi everyone. First post here in the forums.
I just printed 4 sheets worth of Ear Savers, and Iām rubber-banding them into groups of 10, then throwing a bunch of packs into ziplock bags to give to my neighbor who works at the local hospital.
I wanted to provide a quick link if any of the recipients wanted more info (and to provide the necessary legal disclaimer), so I generated this QR code, and printed one out for each bag. It can be scanned through the clear bag without opening it.
You can scan the QR code with your phone, and it takes you to the ā2 Million Ears Savedā page, at https://meet.glowforge.com/earsavers/
Hereās the QR Code (.png), generated from https://www.qrcode-monkey.com/ (I have no affiliation with this site). I hope this is okay, and useful to someone else.
Thanks, Glowforge, for giving me a way to help while I wait for my sewing machine to arrive.
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are you trying to arrange the single ear saver on the sheet yourself? or are you using the full sheet pdf that GF made? the one they designed is completely nested and has 9 rows of 5 and 8 rows of 4, for a total of 77. or are yoiu only counting the 9 rows of 5 (45) and not looking at the short rows in between (32 more)?
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My concern with this design is the ends are too sharp. They too should be rounded so there are no sharp edges at all.
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Putting together this program, especially the system of matching people, is fantastic. Major kudos for that! But the āEar Saversā design has some problems. Iāll name just one. When you score acrylic, the line can be as thick as 0.15mm. Thatās tiny, but Covid-19 is tinier, about 0.125 microns or 0.000125 mm. That ātinyā score is 1000x wider than Covid-19, and it can be hard to clean. Eliminating the scoring will instantly make this design better.
But there are better designs. @dan and @bailey, I encourage you to incorporate them into your matching system. Today, I released designs for Gecko and Eagle, two next generation mask clips for healthcare workers using masks with elastic ear loops.
Gecko and Eagle address all the problems with S clips and all the problems with Ear Savers as well. I went though 2 weeks of rapid iterative prototyping on these mask clips, effectively doing what would typically take months in just 2 weeks. It would have been impossible without the Glowforge letting me rapidly iterate, and not just for prototypes and copies for me to test myself (like doing drop and stress tests), but also for bunches of clips that I gave out for people to try. The final 1.0 releases represent the 7th major version of the Gecko and the 5th major version of the Eagle.
More info and the full design package is available at Mask Clips for Healthcare Masks with Elastic Straps (includes design info, the free forever license, and cut files optimized for Glowforge)
BTW, I labeled these 1.0 because, despite all my design work and testing, there may be improvements. I welcome feedback.
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You are right. Sharp exterior edges and corners have two problems: they can be uncomfortable at times and they make the clip more likely to break when dropped (this isnāt true of crushable corners, like shipping boxes have). You might think these are so lightweight they cannot break when dropped. I can tell you from doing many drop tests that you would be wrong. (Note: rounded corners canāt eliminate potential breakage but it can reduce it by spreading out the force.)
Sharp and tight interior corners (which I canāt tell if the āEar Saverā clip has) have a different problem: they allow debris to be caught, making cleaning hard. This is just like the problem with scoring. A microscopic amount of debris that you havenāt reached with soap or disinfectant can pack a lot of Covid-19.
Yes, but thereās a different technique - weāre working on some mask-user instructions that will include it.
Colors are wonderful!
There were about 40k ear savers printed just today. Weāre well on our way!
Brilliant idea!
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For those of you that are looking for acrylic donations. You could have local independent contractors sponsor (buy the product and deliver to you) your product in exchange for putting their information on the back of the ear saver. For instance āJane Doe, Allstate (825) 224-1892ā . Just an idea! 
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Thank you!
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No one has really mentioned this. Thanks for the info and test.
I dont have any acrylic BUT I do have .020 PETG, which is a bit more flexible, would this be ok to use for making ear savers? if so what cut settings would you recommend?
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PETG is what most folks are using for face shields and cleans better with alcohol. That might be a bit thin for these though