Peterborough's 3D printing experts Photocentric could build ventilators UK needs to fight coronavirus

Double Queen's Award winning Photocentric has offered its 3D printing expertise to the government to build desperately needed ventilators.

Its offer comes in response to a Government appeal to manufacturers across the UK to turn their skills to making the 30,000 ventilators it says will be needed in the coming weeks to treat severe coronavirus cases.

Currently the UK has just 5,000 of the ventilators, which are used by medics to deliver oxygen to patients unable to breathe alone.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he wants 30,000 more made in just a fortnight.

Paul Holt, managing director of Photocentric, said: "We would love to do it.

"We offered our business to the Government site yesterday and said that we would provide our facilities immediately without hesitation or cost.

"We can print most properties of plastic in large format and high resolution.

"We can also print alumina (ceramic).

"So if the designs are open source, we could make a lot of the items needed. We await to hear from them."

Mr Holt said it was not clear yet how long it would take to make a single ventilator.

He said: "When we see the industrial designs we can select which of the parts can be printed by which processes."

The 145 staff at the £11 million turnover Photocentric, which won the Queen's Award for innovation in 2016 and then again two years later for its overseas sales, are currently working on various projects.

But Mr Holt said: "Our existing business would continue to be serviced. We have a fluid manufacturing system based on new lean techniques. Our production lines would morph and personnel would switch from one thing to another.

"Its all very possible."

Using 3D printing techniques to create equipment for the health service is already being used in Italy where a 3D-printer company designed and printed 100 life-saving respirator valves in 24 hours for a hospital that had run out of them.

Photocentric, which is currently working on plans to create a UK Centre of Excellence in Peterborough, that is expected to create 570 jobs, is already helping to change the dental industry after it launched two liquid crystal display 3D printers that can create large numbers of dental models quickly and efficiently.