On Nov. 2, 2020, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) announced that in the Spring of 2020, as news spread of N95 mask and ventilator shortages in hospitals, researchers at U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories sprang into action.

To ensure a ready supply of ventilator parts for hospitals, the PNNL engineers set to work in April, taking apart ventilator breathing circuit and figuring out how to create molds that would allow manufacturers to use new manufacturing approaches to produce parts on demand using 3D printing or additive manufacturing, to custom-design single-use ventilator ports.