{"id":3080,"date":"2022-04-11T10:12:26","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T18:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/?p=3080"},"modified":"2022-04-11T10:13:09","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T18:13:09","slug":"repair-a-broken-kn95-mask","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/blog\/repair-a-broken-kn95-mask\/","title":{"rendered":"Repair a Broken KN95 Mask"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There is a preception that the COVID-19 pandemic is winding down, at least in the USA. So we were able to get some face masks from Amazon at what I thought was a very good price (40\u00a2 each) a few months ago. One brand worked great. We ordered more of another brand. The second brand seemed to have elastic ear loops that were very short. I broke half of them simply in the act of attempting to put them on the first time. So I decided to try and fix them. Why bother? Well, they are otherwise unused, and I like to experiment with this sort of thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On 4 (50%) of the masks that I tried to wear, the elastic loop broke immediately. This is not baseball; a .500 average is terrible.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The weld between the elastic and the mask itself was what failed. Light shines through the white rear filter layer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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I’m going to attempt to reattach the strap. I have a 40-watt soldering iron, a can lid to put under the weld, and aluminum foil to put over the strap as I weld it. I will position the strap and foil with my left hand, and apply the soldering iron with my right. Sorry, I can’t show it, because I’m also taking the picture.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I found that it works best to press the iron against the foil firmly, but very briefly<\/strong> – like 1\/4 of a second. Longer, and you might burn through the whole mask. If the weld doesn’t take, you can always try again, but if the a hole is burned in the mask, you have to throw it away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is what the weld looks like. It was actually quite strong. I pulled the aluminum foil off too quickly – a sliver of it is sticking to the top of the weld.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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And the back side.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a preception that the COVID-19 pandemic is winding down, at least in the USA. So we were able to get some face masks from Amazon at what I thought was a very good price (40\u00a2 each) a few months ago. One brand worked great. We ordered more of another brand. The second brand … Continue reading Repair a Broken KN95 Mask<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[202],"tags":[352,353],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3080"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}