An Estonian company is seeking to spruce up the souvenir industry using 3D printing. Its Luna scanner allows tourists to make a customized 3D figurine of themselves based on characters linked to the place they are visiting.
Bespoke personalized 3D souvenirs of yourself
A white egg-shaped booth stands in Tallinn's Seaplane Harbour.
It's here that a small team of engineers from the Estonian company Wolfprint 3D is testing its 3D scanner booth. The Luna scanner allows its visitors to capture a highly detailed three dimensional scan of their face. Using the data, people can then order either a digital or a 3D printed customized figurine of themselves.
Estonian company Wolfprint 3D is testing its 3D scanner booth
"Our scanners let visitors scan their face and order a character which is customised with their own face. And the characters, the selection of characters depends on the scanners location," said Timmu Toke, CEO, Wolfprint 3D.
"So in London they will be beefeaters, in Rome they can be gladiators, if it's a sports stadium they can be a player of the Yankees for example."
The booth was installed in December 2015 and the first tests have shown it to be very popular.
It has already received orders for more than 200 digital models and over 100 3D printed figurines, despite it being low season. Toke says he hopes to rejuvenate the demand for souvenirs.
"Souvenirs are very, they are not unique, they are very similar everywhere you get them, 'I love New York' cup, and it's the same - it's boring, it's old. People don't buy it. I don't buy souvenirs, but I want to buy souvenirs. That's what we're trying to do, we're trying to make souvenirs cool again," Toke said.
The prices for the figurines and digital models will vary depending on location. The starting price will be about five euros or six US Dollars for the digital model, and 40 euros about 44 US dollars for the 3D printed customized figurine. The company says the figurine will take about three to five days to arrive from the booth to the customer's door.
But the company does not plan to stop with figurines. They are hoping to branch out into the realms of augmented and virtual reality, allowing their 3D digital models to interact with a virtual world.
The CEO said:"We plan to build a network with hundreds, potentially thousands of scanners that produce 3D models to us everyday and then we plan to build different applications in AR (augmented reality), in VR (virtual reality) for those models basically. So the long term vision is actually working with digital data rather than printing figurines."
Toke says there is already interest from corporate clients. He says several of these booths will be placed in Hollywood studios in May.
