All you need to do is go to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Here you can have your face scanned and then swapped out with Harrison Ford-as-Han Solo so that it can be you frozen in carbonite. Once the process is over you can hang yourself or your beloved one on the wall as a trophy.

At the Carbon-Freezing Chamber (located adjacent to The American Idol Experience), several cameras will capture multiple angles of your face. The images are then reconstructed in a computer for processing, and in approximately four weeks, the completed figurine is shipped directly to your house.

This could be you!

Another great initiative, this time by the Kauffman Foundation and Desktop Fabrication Lab. They set up a competition aiming to make desktop 3D printing even more accessible. Low cost 3D printing is already an emerging market. The competitors, including Makerbot, Printrbot, Solidoodle and Ultimaker, sell their machines from between $400-$2200. The ‘problem’ here is that the plastic filament required for the prints is pretty expensive (about $40-$54 per kg). This is between 5 to 10 times the cost of raw resin pellets. If we want to get a widespread adoption of this technology, the cost of using the machines will need to go down even more.

To give this idea a bit more stimulance, the Kauffman Foundation together with DFL set up a competition. The Desktop Factory Competition with a $40k price for the winning team! This price includes a 3D printer, an FS Laser Cutter and a Shapeoko CNC Mill.

So what needs to be done to win this price?

The challenge is to drive down the cost of filament by creating an open source filament extruder. This extruder has to be made for less than $250 in components and must be able to take ABS or PLA resin pellets, mix them with colorant, and extrude a 1.75mm +/- 0.1mm filament that can be used in a 3D printer.

If you are interested in joining this competition, off you go to The Desktop Factory Competition for registration. And good luck!

Trek uses their Objet Connex500 3D printer and an ABS-like material to rapidly prototype functional bike parts that can be tested on real bikes – in the field – just 2 hours after on-screen design! The Objet 3D printing process saves weeks from the conventional CNC milling process, and allows them to perfect their design parts before production.

Unfortunately we don’t know, but if we may believe the comments on Objets Youtube channel it’s about time:

There are dozens of startups making affordable 3D printers for the home consumer, although they’re still expensive since most aren’t an established company with manufacturing links. We’re all waiting for a company like Objet to ‘take the world by storm!’ by releasing an affordable desktop unit! hurry before someone else does

This Is Me

The company is called This Is Me or TIM and offers a service which sells 3D scanned and 3D printed copies of yourself. This video shows you how they do it.

Which 3D printer do they use?

They don’t mention on their site what kind of 3D printer they are using but Dr. Raford guesses they’re using a $60,000 USD multi-colour ZCorp 650.

What does a mini-me cost?

A 6-inch, full color statue will cost you about $300 – $400 USD.

Take a look at the video and see the DreamVendor in action.

Is there an actual demand you might ask? Yes there is!  The Dream Vendor has been open for just weeks and they are unable to count the number of models printed.

3D Systems

3D Systems is rapidly growing from $112.8 million in 2009 to $159.8 million in 2010 to $230.4 million in 2011. Profit has grown from $1.06 million to $19.5 million to $35.4 million respectively. DDD is trading at a market cap of around $1.40 billion and has been in a healthy uptrend moving from under $15.00 late last year to $27.42 now.

Stratasys

Stratasys has been growing both revenue and profit over the past three years, just like 3D Systems. They have grown revenue from $98.9 million in 2009 to $117.8 million in 2010 to $155.8 million in 2011. Stratasys’ profit has grown from $4.11 million to $9.37 million to $20.6 million respectively. Who knows what their profit will be in 2012 now they have merged with Objet Ltd. becoming the biggest player within the 3D printing industry.

Stratasys is trading at a market cap of $1.05 billion. SSYS has climbed from under $15 to over $49 in the last year.

If you haven’t already invested a little of your money in one of these two companies after reading the Let’s go invest in 3D printing! article, you might consider doing it now.

This event will bring together all areas of the industry to display the latest innovations within the world of 3D printing. All branches will come together during this event including fashion, transport, architecture, medical, education and music. The event is expected to attract over 3500 people.

The key features of the event will include:

3D Print Show Live: Running across all three days will be a series of exclusive events with 3D printed fashion, unique design pieces and musicians performing entirely on 3D printed instruments. Even the fashion show catwalk will be 3D printed.

Seminars and workshops: Over fifty seminars and workshops, presented by industry specialists, designers and innovators.

Specially commissioned work: Cutting edge designers like Silvia Weidenbach and Tobias Klein will be collaborating to create unique work exclusive for the show.

A 3D Printshow Manifesto: The show will also see the development of a 3D Printing Manifesto that will help raise awareness of the technology, bridging the gap between the advancement of the technology and consumer awareness.

The tickets for the consumer show will be released to the public on June 1st 2012.

More on this event to come!

The program is part of a $1 billion White House initiative called the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation. In this program a network will be built of 14 institutes to spur ideas on improving domestic manufacturing. Several federal agencies, including Defence, the Energy Department and the National Science Foundation will be responsible for managing this program.

Defense expects to fund $30 million from fiscal 2012 through 2014. The majority of funding (18.8 million) is expected to be spent in fiscal 2012.

The Pentagon is, as we speak, soliciting nonprofit organizations and universities to launch the pilot. A proposer’s day for the pilot program will be held May 16. Proposals are due on June 14. The expectations are that this Pentagon participation in 3D printing is going to give the market quite a boost.

Contour Crafting (the term of 3D printing buildings) follows the same principle as your “average” 3D printer, the layer by layer technique. So far a couple of companies have researched this successfully. Prototypes of concrete builders are now able to stack fast-drying concrete and form dynamic shapes. Even a life-sized wall can be printed. We can call this trial the first generation of actual house printers.

The 3D Contour Crafter

Now, Sebastian Bertram has designed a concept called the 3D Contour Crafter. This enormous printer might well be the link to actual printing of houses. The project is called “One house a day” which sounds pretty ambitious but at the same time pretty awesome!

Take a look at the next animation explaining the possible impact of such a printer.

Combining industrial production with this rapid prototyping technique could potentially revolutionize urban construction methods. The fast pace and uniform nature of this kind of building would speed up the construction process to an unprecedented rate, enabling builders to keep up with the demand for fast-growing urban areas.

What might even be the best feature of it all is the reduction of material-waste to a near zero. Whereas conventional building methods deliver loads of waste by carrying the philosophy of subtracting materials, 3D printing uses growth as a philosophy where there is no need for loosing material at all. Therefore minimizing environmental impact.