Aug 14, 2021 09:00:00

How to make a 'perfect protective mask' to protect your dog with a 3D printer

Among the wild grasses that grow on the roadside, some grasses that bear ears grow spiny protrusions called

'nogi'. It is almost harmless to humans as it sticks to clothes, but it is very dangerous for dogs walking because it may stick to their feet, eyes and ears. As a measure against the feared nogi called Foxtail overseas, engineer Amos Dudley has released a process of making a perfect protective mask for his dog with a 3D printer.

Puppy PPE | Amos Dudley
https://amosdudley.com/weblog/Designing-PPE-for-Hilde

Although not well known to dog owners, nogi is a very dangerous plant for dogs, and you should be very careful when walking your dog during the summer-autumn when it grows. If a dog's eyes or ears are stabbed by a nogi, it is difficult to remove, and in some cases, the place where the nogi is stuck can cause an infection and even become severe.

The picture below shows Dudley wearing a nogi-prevention mask prescribed by a veterinarian on his dog. However, these masks interfere with the dog's sight, smell, and hearing, which puts a lot of stress on the dog and has the problem of not being able to eat rice or snacks. In addition, as an episode unique to the United States, there are cases where the owner is mistaken for 'having a gun' when holding a dog wearing a mask.

So Dudley devised a helmet-type protective mask made of thin plastic that fits perfectly on the dog's face. Because of the design, I decided to first scan the dog's head in 3D.

Below is the head of Dudley's dog, which

was actually scanned with the app 'ScandyPro ' that allows 3D scanning on the iPhone. In addition, Mr. Dudley seems to own HP's 3D scanner, but since the scanning speed is too fast with a high-performance scanner, it can not be scanned well with a dog whose whole body is covered with fur. ..

The mask data designed based on this scan result is as follows. The motif is a mask worn by police dogs, from which a rough shape is first made, the surface is smoothed, and fine adjustments are made by superimposing it on the scan data to complete the basic design.

Below is the final design of the mask, which has been fine-tuned with more details. There are holes in the eyes and ears of the mask, but since the purpose of the mask is to 'protect the eyes and ears from the nogi without disturbing the eyes and hearing of the dog', it is a separate part for the eyes. You need to attach clear material lens parts and mesh protective parts to your ears.

The lens is thin acrylic and molded with vacuum foam.

A resin mask base output by a 3D printer (left image) and a prototype mask No. 1 (right image) with a lens and ear protection parts attached.

When you actually attach a mask to your dog, it looks like this. According to Dudley, the quality of the mask was good and the result was satisfactory, but the dog was so sensitive to the shape of the object that other dogs were very scared of the dog wearing the mask. thing. As a result, Dudley said he had to refrain from using it in dog parks where there are many other dogs.

In addition, an action camera such as GoPro can be attached to the helmet, so it is possible to shoot movies from the perspective of a dog. You can see the video actually taken from the perspective of Mr. Dudley's dog below.

Hilde Helmet Cam-YouTube