E-commerce giant Amazon has deployed its engineers from the drone delivery unit to develop face shields. The company has announced that it will start selling these shields on Amazon.com after a successful trial run with medical professionals.

 

In an official post, the company revealed that a technical program manager at Amazon joined a group of 3D printing enthusiasts and started making face shields for frontline workers. This group had created its own design and was assembling the shields by hands in their offices and homes. The Amazon employee brought on colleagues from Prime Air’s mechanical design and hardware teams and in no time they started refining the face shield design.

The engineers optimized the face shields for 3D printing and injection moulding and at the same time, they made sure that it is comfortable and lightweight. Amazon also added that the open-source design is available for everyone and is also approved by the National Institute of Health.

The shields will be soon available for all the customers to purchase. The e-tailer will initially sell the face shields to the frontline workers and then it will make them available for the public. “Because of the design innovations and the capabilities of our supply chain, we are confident we will be able to list them at a significantly lower price—almost a third of the cost—than all other reusable face shields currently available to frontline workers. We are looking to prioritize frontline workers and then eventually open up to all Amazon customers,” said Amazon.

The company has not yet revealed whether it will give the face shields to its workers or not.