Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why N95 masks are hard to make

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 363 posts

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#341

Post by arcticbull »

axaxs wrote: post #133
arcticbull wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why we insist on keeping people in jobs that can be automated. Let them go pursue something that's fulfilling. Not automating something that can be just to keep people doing jobs we don't need done is a fascinating make-work project. The displaced should be re-trained, provided meaningful opportunities, or yeah, paid basic income out of the money saved by them not going to work. Why pay them to do…

Because to me, the consumer, I can't think of a single time automation replacing humans has been better. Self checkouts suck for anything more than a handful of items, especially compared to a well trained cashier/bagger combo. Automated call/IVR systems are hypertension inducing bad. ATMs are no replacement for tellers for most situations that bring one to the bank. I'm not a complete luddite. In many systems, speci…

I mean, that just sounds like a matter of time does it not? Or a business opportunity. I can't imagine that there's some fundamental limitation to these devices that precludes a good experience.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#342

Post by robotnikman »

lazyjones wrote: post #206
solatic wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. The economic benefits of globalized supply chains are real. The question is not whether or not supply chains should be globalized but how to ensure their safety in the event of a global disruption? It's days like these that I'm really sad that more Americans don't do military service. Ensuring the long-term viability of large, generally dormant stockpiles is the core competency of the military in peacetim…

> My argument is that the military should maintain large manufacturing capacity that is generally dormant during peacetime (when it is too expensive compared to a globalized supply chain) so that it can be spun up in the event of global supply chain disruptions. Might be a good solution, but how about having some more generic production capacity instead that can adapt quickly to urgent needs? China is quickly convert…

The US did this during WWII, I don't see why it can't be done again.

They also took some more complex designs which required skilled labor and hand working (the 40mm Bofors comes to mind as an example) and modified the design significantly so it could be easily mass produced. This was in the days before CAD when everything was done on paper too

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#343

Post by lazyjones »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #336
lazyjones wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My argument is that the military should maintain large manufacturing capacity that is generally dormant during peacetime (when it is too expensive compared to a globalized supply chain) so that it can be spun up in the event of global supply chain disruptions. Might be a good solution, but how about having some more generic production capacity instead that can adapt quickly to urgent needs? China is quickly convert…

> " generic production capacity " Much like the generic scientist/engineer in video games (imagine telling a chemical engineer that they're suddenly a electrical engineer), there is no such thing as "generic production capacity". Specific high-tech industries require specific hardware and specific expertise (like the melt-blown fabric mentioned in the article) that you can't just keep on standby indefinitely.

> Specific high-tech industries require specific hardware and specific expertise (like the melt-blown fabric mentioned in the article) that you can't just keep on standby indefinitely.

This depends on the product design and one has to be flexible. Do you think it's impossible to build N100 filter cartridges without melt-blown fabric?

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#344

Post by toyg »

wazoox wrote: post #332
toyg wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Efficiency and resiliency are different things. If you want resiliency, you plan accordingly - left to its own devices, the capitalist market will always go for ultimate efficiency, that's a primary property of the system. This is not the Soviet Union deciding to do potatoes in one country and cars in another, people take smaller decisions that aggregate up to certain phenomenons. If you don't like those phenomenons,…

Sorry but no, the problem isn't of industry closing down in France and opening back in Belgium, you're misrepresenting things. There has been a long history of the idea that we Europeans don't really need to "make things", that we could relocate our industry wherever it's more "efficient" (i. e. cheaper, because mostly of lower environmental and social safeguards, and because nobody directly pays for the externalitie…

You're mixing together a bunch of different issues. On some of them we don't even disagree. But they are different issues. And the issue of "sovereignty" is precisely the tribalistic attitude I was talking about.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#345

Post by ethbro »

rwmurrayVT wrote: post #314
ethbro wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You definitely see it in defense-related locales. Driving around Newport News, Groton, or even Birmingham is like being on another planet economically speaking. But I definitely see the point, as most of the suppliers are sized for defense, not commercial industrial volume. And from their perspective, I get the choice. Why risk expansion, when the trend has been towards free trade and offshoring? A 100x customer who…

Driving around Newport News is like driving around a desolate shithole. There are very few nice neighborhoods in the area. Newport News and Hampton are the worst cities in the Hampton Roads area.

That's what a shrinking population and economy does to an area.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#346

Post by simonh »

piokoch wrote: post #292
simonh wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to see how lower paid jobs are more liveable or provide better quality of life, or how smaller scale and therefore less efficient manufacturing would be better for the environment. I just don't see how these outcomes are supposed to arise. More resilient, ok maybe, but surely there are other ways that resilience could be achieved through e.g. rolling stockpiling or maintaining flexible manufacturing capabil…

"quality of life" what's that, that's a question. Does buying new car every 3 years is a condition for a good life quality? New iPhone every 2 years? Pair of shoes/trousers or fashionable t-shirt every month? Maybe people will just discover that driving older car does not really deteriorate their life quality and new iPhone does not really matter, it just allows Apple to put more cash on the huge pile they already ha…

Dude, if you don’t want a new phone don’t buy one. It’s ok. Nobody will get upset.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#347

Post by simonh »

coldtea wrote: post #272
simonh wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to see how lower paid jobs are more liveable or provide better quality of life, or how smaller scale and therefore less efficient manufacturing would be better for the environment. I just don't see how these outcomes are supposed to arise. More resilient, ok maybe, but surely there are other ways that resilience could be achieved through e.g. rolling stockpiling or maintaining flexible manufacturing capabil…

> It's hard to see how lower paid jobs are more liveable or provide better quality of life We had higher paid jobs (or more yield per job, a single working person could support a family, buy a house, send kids to college) in the 50s and 60s for example, so I'm not sure why "turning back time" means lower paid jobs (or less purchase capacity). Give me necessities (house/rent, food, taking care of kids, college, etc) a…

Ok, that’s fine. It’s your life. If you want to go and work in a factory, good for you.

I had a conversation like this with a friend of mine a few years ago. He was complaining about the lack of manufacturing jobs here in the UK and that we needed real jobs for real people. So I pointed at his 5 year old son playing nearby and said ok. What sort of factory would he like his son to work in when he grows up? What sort of education did he plan for him that would best suit him for factory life? Silence.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#348

Post by Ericson2314 »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #244
Ericson2314 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does one of the n95 cotton candy machines even exist in the US? I would love to see the specs for them made free and open so anyone could attempt to produce one and then have it vetted. Contributing to e.g. firmware code for the thing is like the only meaningful thing I could put my skills towards in this epidemic. It would be an honor to do so.

The problem is not the specs and firmware code with these machines, it is the precision and tuning it to get good quality output. In the physical world, working with sub-micron polymer products is not something you solve with software. They wrote in the article about some challenges, none is trivial and none is due to hiding the specs or writing bad code.

The latency is due to those physical constraints, as you say and as discussed in the article. But that doesn't mean that IP constraints hinder the embarrassingly parallel scale out of multiple new machines put together by different people in different places.

Now, having 100 new machines ready in 5 months might be little better than 3 new ones in 5 months.

I don't mean to be one of those assholes that presumes software subsumes all problems, but my experience working with engineers is that they confuse a non-software hard part with a non-software critical path: even though software is the easy part, there are still gains to be had from making the easy part easier.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#349

Post by jpindar »

thu2111 wrote: post #280
kilroy123 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what can we do as a nation to change that? Should we even try at this point?

Tariffs. The US has already started!

They've put tariffs on raw materials and sub-assemblies, which is making it less economical to manufacture things in the US.

Re: Why N95 masks are hard to make

#350

Post by Scoundreller »

jhanschoo wrote: post #160
Scoundreller wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The masks filter pollution about as effectively after prolonged use as when they're new. Filters generally get better at filtering as they get dirty. A pore with a mountain of dirt/dust over it gets even better at only permitting gasses through. But that also means less and less flow, until you're letting nothing through at all. I think the other problem for medical use is moisture buildup. A damp/wet/sweaty N95 do…

Do you have a source for that? The recommendations I've seen suggest otherwise, and this matches my intuition. Wear creates and enlarges pores, and also, pores of the right size get clogged resulting in more flow over pores that are too large to filter.

Depends on what's hitting the filter. All "wear" will enlarge pores by definition, otherwise it's not wear.

And in your example, if pores are 0.1-0.3micron, and you have uniform 0.2micron particles hitting it, yes. But reality isn't usually so uniform.

Shards of glass will create more problems for the filter media than shredded N95 mask dust :)

A mask covered in saw dust will slow down and make a particle hit against the filter more turbulent = less chance of forcing its way through.

Post reply on HN