The UK supermarket chain, Asda, is currently trailing 3D in-store printing of mini-me figurines. Cost: £ 40 (€ 47 or $Aus 67 or $USA 64)
Customers can buy 3D coloured versions of any person or object including the family car or dog (if Trixy can keep still for 2 mins) scaled down to an 8-inch figure.
Now you too can play games with yourself. (Warning: Avoid wording involving ‘play with’ and ‘yourself’.)
It takes two minutes using a hand-held scanner to create the 3D image and 6 – 8 hours for the 3D printer to produce the figure.
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The Virtual You
3D body scanning already exists so you can create a 1:1 scale avatar (A Mevatar, perhaps?) of youself for online shopping. By combining this technology with 3D printing the scaled-down Mini Me concept was born.
3D PRINTING: THE MATHS
Maths is involved at every stage of the Mini Me production to produce the scanner, the scanner program, the printer and the printer program.
It is the scale that is intriguing.
The scale used by the 3D printer is approx 1:10 ratio.
What?
According to the BBC average man in England is 5ft 9in (175.3cm) tall and weighed 13.16 stone (83.6kg) and woman is 11 stone (70.2kg) and 5ft 3in tall (161.6cm).
3D printers use materials from brass to silver to ceramics so figurines can be quite heavy. Assuming the ceramic material has a similar density to the human body, the 1:10 scale male figurine would weight over 1 stone (8 kg) and a female 1 stone plus (7 kg)!
Will shoppers be staggering home in York carrying 7kg figurines?????
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Wait a minute:
Mini Me Mathspig is just 1/1,000 of Big Mathspig
or one little cube in the pack of 1,000.
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