Perfect for narcissists amongst us, Oxford Street’s Selfridges is offering the opportunity to ‘print’ a plastic version of yourself for between £50-£200. The figures will be manufactured using 3-D printers, which as their name suggests, ‘print’ in 3-D.
The manufacturing procedure involves stepping in to a scanner that captures a 3-D image of you in animation modelling software. This is then fed into the 3-D printer, which uses an ‘additive’ process to build a plastic replica, layer by layer – and each layer is around 100 micrometres thick (a tenth of a millimetre).
The price is dependent on the size of the figurine and will take between 1-2 days to produce, depending on demand. Luckily the scan only takes 10 seconds so you can pop in, then pop back at a later date to pick up your miniature doppelganger.
Additionally, the department store will also be selling 3-D printers in the run-up to Christmas, although these are more pricey at between £750 and £3,200.
3-D printing has taken off in recent years. The process recently ran into controversy when a blueprint to manufacture a gun using 3-D printers was made widely available on the Internet. The plans have been downloaded around 100,000 times.
Now, the V&A museum is set to display copies of the gun, printed in London.
Two prototypes of the ‘Liberator’, as well as one disassembled gun will be displayed as part of the London Design Festival which runs 14-22 September.
