The idea of making a tattoo machine from a 3D printer emerged in Public Domain Remix workshop held by French Ministry of Culture by Appropriate Audience team. Making a tattoo machine from MakerBot Replicator printer, this team now expanded the project even further and manufactured a 3D printed robotic arms that can tattoo.
Students Pierre Emm, Piort Widelka and Johan Da Silvera found the idea of developing a tattoo machine from a 3D printer in Public Domain Remix technology event. Carrying out this project in only 8 hours; the team continued to this project and made a robotic arm tattoo machine.
The French design team behind the project, are calling it “the world’s first tattoo by an industrial robot”. Together with engineering researcher David Thomasson; they modified the robot to put a tattoo gun on the end of its arm.
“Immediately we were thinking along the same lines; and we wanted to see a big mean industrial machine doing this subtle interaction with a human,” said Thomasson; who worked alongside the team at an artists in residence programme headed up by software company Autodesk.
The team first 3D-scanned his lower leg to analyse how deep the needle could penetrate. They then inputted the scan into Autodesk’s Dynamo software; a programming environment that lets designers visualise parametric, conceptual designs; and to automate tasks.