Students of the ENSCI, L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle in France, have been developing a 3D printer. Not your average FDM printer, but one that can make you a tattoo!
The brains behind this ingenious project are Pierre Emm, Piotr Widelka and Johan Da Silveira. Their hope is that one day it will become the standard for tattoo salons. We caught up with the gang to discuss the future of their concept.
How did you get the idea for such a machine?
We were just cycling when it came to us! Of course, the idea didn’t come out of thin air, we all have a close relationship with the tattoo community.
How has the tattoo community reacted to the printer?
We are thrilled each time we receive a mail from a tattooist: they seem to really enjoy the idea of having a new tool to bring their ideas into physical reality. The funny thing is that the machine can inspire people to get tattooed. Because our printer helps bringing two different worlds together, tattooing and 3D printing, art and making, more people are attracted to it.
How does your printer work?
We use a Makerbot as a ‘base’ for our creation!
Instead of the extruder, we place a dermograph.
The movements of the dermograph are determined by a 2D drawing that is converted into a 3D surface, as vectors.
We haven’t built a ‘one time finished printer’. The machine always evolves, even if we use the same elements to build it.
What is the main difficulty?
Keeping things simple. Tattooing is a real science, there are a lot of different techniques, skin textures, and ink types available. All those factors are obstacles for making our machine usable by anyone. The road to launch might still be long, but it’s exciting to keep evolving. In a sense it’s actually quite similar to the RepRap project.
What is your best memory with your printer?
Definitely the first time someone got tattooed. It was amazing to see the printer mark a perfect circle on someone’s arm! And there are more to come: we’ll soon be at Saint Petersbourg to present our project!
