Francesco and Co. 3D Printers Helping Small Cities Live and Breathe

There is a startup in Lomazzo (Como) where a battery of 25 3D printers churns out 2,500 filtered mask kits per week, the equivalent of 50,000 disposable masks. And these masks, produced specifically in response to the coronavirus emergency, are donated in different areas of Italy to small facilities and institutions, which have a much harder time obtaining them.

Leading the Caracol AM project is Bocconi alumnus Francesco De Stefano, CEO and cofounder of the company, along with a group of friends from Politecnico di Milano and Cattolica, while another Bocconian, Violetta Nespolo, is Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer. Started in 2018, Caracol "was founded with the idea of being an integrated service for 3D printing for various sectors, such as the automotive, space and architecture sectors," explains De Stefano.

After his Bachelor from Bocconi, he also completed a Master of Science degree at London Business School and an MBA at Columbia in New York. "Then the coronavirus came, just as we were in the middle of a round of funding and were launching into some major projects. We had greatly increased production capacity with 25 printers and 4 manufacturing robots. The virus created a stalemate, which of course led to the shelving of many of those projects."

At this point, Francesco and his colleagues wondered not only about their future, but also and most importantly about what they could do to help in the chaos of the general situation. "We saw that there were already several 3D printing projects for personal protective equipment or other supplies," continues Francesco. "They seemed like very solid projects, but difficult to scale. How can large quantities be produced if each mask takes 4-5 hours to print?"

Thus, the team got to work studying and developed a reusable mask after 200 prototypes. In the meantime, they sought out help from the community to support mass production of the kits through crowdfunding. "The result was that we could print a complete kit (one mask plus 20 filters) every 20 minutes and, thanks to further investments, we hope to increase the weekly capacity from 2,500 to 5,000 kits."

Distributing the 10,000 kits already produced was also the result of hard thinking: "We realized that it was mainly the small municipalities and health facilities in small towns that had the hardest time supplying masks," explains De Stefano. So donations went primarily to small areas, such as their home town of Lomazzo, Rivoli (Turin), Cusano Milanino, or to small facilities such as a center for children with disabilities in Aosta: "The latter wrote us desperately because they weren't able to get the masks the kids needed for their treatments." The remaining masks went to Red Cross volunteers. Francesco and his colleagues responded quickly to the situation. And their response can be described by something Francesco says almost in passing: "We're a startup, so the idea of stopping is not for us.