Earlier this week, YouTuber and hardware hacker Emily The Engineer unveiled how she successfully converted a 3D printer into a fully functioning tattoo machine, which was then subsequently tested on her friend Dan, who reportedly came up with the whole idea, to begin with [h/t Hackaday]. Amusingly, the full video documenting the process includes Dan calling relevant family and friends to get opinions across the board, including his girlfriend expressing disapproval but slightly acquiescing when told it may end up being safe.
So, is it safe? Probably, but Emily still firmly recommends against viewers following in her footsteps in the full video. Even executing the tattoo required extensive hardware modding the 3D printer and rewriting its firmware, making it (mostly) only operate on a single axis and be able to use a tattoo gun properly.
So, what are the broader ramifications of a project like this? Should we expect at-home tattoo machines to be retail products any time soon? At retail, probably not— but the existence of this project does show that some degree of tattooing work is indeed possible through the powers of automation, careful tweaking of existing technology, and lots of medical caution. Emily was wise to add a literal panic button to this machine if a tattoo goes horribly wrong.
However, this project isn’t designed to replace existing tattoo artists or anything of the sort. For anybody outside this specific scenario, it’ll almost always be a better, less expensive choice to go to a highly rated local tattoo artist and get your ink done there.
It is fascinating that this is possible as far as potential alternative uses for 3D printers go. It totally makes sense, considering the accuracy of the machinery required to create 3D prints. While the Z axis has largely been removed from the equation thanks to all this modding to draw 2D images, the level of precision needed in a 3D printer and by a tattoo artist is pretty similar. Hence, a modded 3D printer could do something like this.
For your health and/or sanity, we seriously would not recommend repurposing any of the best 3D printers for such a dangerous DIY project. Such things can quickly go wrong and put you in the hospital if you don’t know what you’re doing— or even if you do know what you’re doing and end up disastrously unlucky. Many things in life are best left to a steady human hand who knows what they’re doing, not a machine that happens to be capable of approximating it.
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