Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have come up with a technique to create thin, hair-like strands of plastic on a 3D printer.
The way it's done is similar to, and inspired by, the way that glue guns produce thin strands of plastic. "You just squirt a little bit of material and pull away," said Gierad Laput, a PhD student in Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII). "It's a very simple idea, really."
Cut, Curled or Braided
The resulting process isn't fast, however - it takes about 20-25 minutes to put hair on 10 square millimetres. But it can be done without special hardware, and the resulting hair can be cut, curled or even braided. Dense-close-cropped strands can even form a brush.
So far the team has added hair in various different colours to a number of 3D-printed objects. They've put hair on a troll head, whiskers on an elderly wizard and a tail on a horse. Next, Laput and his colleagues plan to use more sophisticated materials to produce hair with magnetic or other properties.
