A man made a custom heart-shaped face mask for his cardiologist wife — and the design is free to download

• Allison Dupont is a cardiologist working on the frontlines during the coronavirus pandemic in Georgia.
• With hospitals running low on protective personal equipment (PPE), Dupont's husband used a 3D printer to create a custom face mask for her, appropriately shaped like a heart.
• The couple has also donated 3D-printed masks to health workers in their area.
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Allison Dupont, a cardiologist, is working on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic. Fearful that her hospital might run out of personal protective equipment like N95 masks, her husband Drew designed her a mask to wear to work.

"He really just wanted to make one for me, and make a cute one," Dupont told Insider. "Since I'm a cardiologist, he wanted it to have a heart with an EKG rhythm on it. He made it perfect for me, and a lot of people wanted it."

Now, the Duponts have been running their two 3D printers almost non-stop to produce more N95-equivalent face masks. They've been donating them to doctors and nurses in their area and around the country to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

A software engineer by trade, Drew Dupont based his mask design off a pre-existing template he found on Thingiverse, a website where users can share digital designs.

"The way that they had it designed didn't quite make sense for what was needed," he said. "They were just talking about using charcoal filters and inserts and other things that wouldn't be easy to come by or very effective for a frontline worker who's being exposed directly to a COVID patient."

He redesigned the mask to protect essential workers by stripping the design down to the base mask and then adding the equivalent of an N95 filter.

Allison Dupont shared a photo of her custom mask on Facebook, where it received over 18,000 shares — and interest ballooned from there. People, especially other hospital employees, were concerned about the N95 mask shortage and wanted a 3D-printed mask of their own.

Since then, the couple have donated around 80 masks to hospital employees. Each mask takes around five hours to 3D print. They've also shared the link on Thingiverse so others can print it themselves. It has already been downloaded several thousand times, according to the Duponts. Drew also added a blank template so people can put their own spin on the mask's design.

However, the mask hasn't been FDA approved, so the couple recommends testing it first to make sure that the mask has a good seal. Healthcare workers need to wear filtration masks because fabric and surgical masks don't protect against COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control recommends fabric face masks to the general population — not medical professionals.

"[Fabric masks] aren't really to protect you," she said. "They don't filter the virus when you're breathing in air, but they do prevent droplets from spreading everywhere."

So far, Dupont said she's been lucky because the hospital she works at hasn't ran out of N95 masks, but she still feels better knowing that she has Drew's 3D-printed mask on hand if she needs it. She knows some people who are already using their own masks.

"The biggest worry I have is not really me getting sick so much as bringing it home to my family. The scary thing about this virus is there are so many people walking around carrying this virus that are asymptomatic," she said.

Her heart goes out to the nurses and doctors who work in the ICU with COVID-19 patients all day.

"All of us are worried," she said. "No one has had a decent night's sleep in the last month in healthcare anyways."

• Read more:
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