Face Mask Flexible Comfort Band

I’ve been using the “s” hook design for my face mask, but the one drawback for me is that its not flexible. I saw some 3D printed designs and adapted that design to one that can be laser cut. Overall length is appx 5.5" and I’ve added kerf cuts to provide the flexibility I was missing in other designs. This hasn’t been used a whole lot so not sure about the durability.

The kerf cuts are experimental, so any modification ideas are welcome, and of course, so is other design feedback. Sorry for the poor quality image.

facemask-comfortholder-v2
facemask-comfortholder-v2.svg.zip (4.6 KB)

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Is there a file here somewhere? Thanks

For some reason the .svg isn’t loading. Will try again.
facemask-comfortholder-v2

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Depending on your head, the s-hook (long modified one) can be bent to a gentle curve to better fit the wearer’s head curvature. Just pop it in your oven, gas grill or use a heat gun. About 350-375 for just a few minutes. You can form it around the outside of a bowl. Or slump it I’ve the side of a bowl resting on its side so you don’t burn your fingers.

Would that also anneal the acrylic at the same time?

I have had no luck with living hinges and acrylic, way to brittle and easily breaks.

Thank you for this more comfortable fit.

You’ll get some annealing effect but I’m not sure if the resulting stress relief would be equivalent to the more traditional slow & low (1hr/mm at 170F) annealing process.

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To the best of my understanding, it’s the opposite. The extreme heat along the cut induces stress into the cut edges of the material. It’s why it forms cracks when exposed to certain solvents (but uncut edges don’t.)

Often the .svg does load - but it loads at like 10x17 pixels so is nigh invisible. You can go into the code and add some zeroes and it’ll magically appear

I had a few people proto-testing various S hooks and they usually complained about it not being flexible.
They settled on a very simplistic ‘S’ design (5x0.50) that was made with 1/16 acrylic. Flexible enough they felt comfortable and cheap enough that they could be deemed throw away if not wanting to sanitize.

Try some 0.06 acrylic with your design. It made a difference to those I gave them to.

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