[davidw]

Anyone pitching in seems like they're doing a good thing, but isn't the problem one more of political organization and scaling production?

In other words, the US president (he is the only one authorized to do it) needs to activate the Defense Production Act, and get existing companies to mass produce existing designs. Something similar needs to happen elsewhere. This is a matter of days or weeks, not months.

Please gently correct me if I have this wrong.

[labcomputer]

My understanding is that the various open source ventilator projects are attempting to use readily-available COTS parts (by, for example, using a constant-speed blower and valves operated by RC hobby servos instead of a variable-speed blower). So that should, at least partially, solve the scaling problem.

As for political organization, I would think that almost takes care of itself if someone presents a turn-key, scalable solution.

[hackcasual]

So if these open source ventilators are needed in any number, it's going to be dependent on the RC hobby servo motor supply chain?

[rawfan]

It‘s already happening elsewhere voluntarily. Sharp is producing masks and Draeger is AFAIK working on massproducing ventilators.