ACI Surgical N95 Respirator

ACI Surgical N95 Respirator

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Video Transcript

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the place where we're testing every single mask in the world. Today, we're looking at North American N95s and excited to test the ACI Advanced Concepts Innovations Surgical N95 Respirator. Let's get this thing in the clamp and we'll talk about it.

So it does what a lot of these boxes do, which I don't love this but I know why they're doing it. Makes me feel good that it's sealed. Open it up. Wow. Look at that. I love this. Look at that. That's attention to detail there. They made their pamphlet exactly the size of the box. You open it up and it looks like you got 50 respirators right in here. So in the clamp.

So it's super interesting about this is that this design, they call this the duck bill design and you'll see why in a second. The clamper may be already spoiling the concept, however. This is a PFE machine, particulate filtration efficiency machine. If you want to find out more about how this works, check out that link. All right.
Let's talk about this duck bill design. What's interesting about me testing this ACI right now is that I just tested the Gerson 3230 and it's a very, very similar look. They call it the duck bill. So you can see, yep looks like a duck. They've done this huge nose wire on the outside, which is interesting and they've got it to be light blue. Most N95s I find are white, so it's kind of cool that they made it light blue, because it's a little bit differentiating. We've got all the technical data on the back. Oh wow. They're printing the lot number on every mask.

That's pretty cool. Then just kind of open it like this. That's like that surgical tape stuff. Interesting. Switch to this. I'll get it. Don't worry. Just stick with me folks. I'll get there. Okay. Okay. Pretty good fit. Pretty good breathability. I am getting a fairly medium to strong like plastic smell. I think that's because it's not being sealed in the box. Not plastic smell, a cardboard smell. It basically smells like a cardboard box, but it's not anything that's horrible.

Pretty good seal there.  I must switch over to the PFE machine just to show you and if you saw that real quick, 133 pascals. Normally that would be great. Actually our cup respirator when we put it in here is right around like 150 or actually I think it's 200. Our surgical mask, our KN95 mask that we have is right around this, so it's very, very similar. Look at that filtration efficiency, 99.419; 99.419. But the reason why I'm bringing it up is I just tested the Gerson and while this has a lot more filtration, that Gerson was almost three times as breathable.


It's interesting that they have a design. That's very, very similar to the Gerson. They're beating on the efficiency, but the breathability is far less. It's really what's important to you, if having that filtration efficiency is the most important. But filtration is going to follow breathability. Makes sense, right? If something is easier to breathe in, it's not going to have as high filtration because this is a filter that you're putting on your face. Pretty good product though. I would definitely recommend these guys.


This is made in Lakeland, Florida. They have a huge facility. Really cool story about these guys. They were responding to the COVID-19 crisis. ACI, if you look up Advanced Concept Innovations, they're actually a packaging company. What they do is packages, which is probably why they had the attention to details and stuff like this. They know how to put stuff in boxes, which believe me is no small feat. I think probably 30% of my job is figuring out how to put [inaudible 00:04:40] in boxes. It's not trivial. It seems easy. It's not and that's what these guys were doing before the pandemic. They saw this crisis. They responded to it.
There's actually a really great a video on their website, if you want to check that out. It's ACI N95. Talks about their journey to making this really great product and it's very, very affordable. So this is a scalable solution that can compete with Chinese prices and I'm just so glad that they are here on American soil.

All right. Thank you guys so much for watching. I've appreciated this. We've got another hundred masks to test, so stick with me and I will see you on that next test.

Description

The ACI Surgical N95 Respirator meets all the NIOSH standards necessary for a N95. In our independent laboratory testing, the ACI respirator passed benchmarks for filtration efficiency as well as breathability. The blue-colored mask features a duckbill-style shape and head straps that fit around the head to ensure it covers the mouth and nose of the person wearing it. 

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