3D printer, Mink allows user to print any colour of cosmetics

Now women can print their own makeup at home, thanks to Harvard alumna Grace Choi's invention, a 3D printer called Mink that allows users to print out any colour of cosmetics, which could be actually applied to faces just like an ordinary maquillage.

Mink was displayed on 5 May, Monday at TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York.

According to a report by TechCrunch, Mink gave its users the freedom to pick any colour on the web as also in the real world, and through the use of software like Photoshop or Paint, they could print that colour using FDA-approved ink into any kind of makeup, blush, eye shadow or lip gloss.

Choi explained that the inkjet handled the pigment, and the same raw material substrates could create any type of makeup, from powders to cream to lipstick. Implementing the ability on the Mink was not hard to do, it was actually more of a business decision.

Replying to a question about her plan on manufacturing the hardware, Choi said she had failed a lot of times before, and this was not her first rodeo. She was a serial inventor and had been through the manufacturing ring before. She said she knew all the pitfalls and though inventors might fail at some things, but they just needed to make sure they did not fail where it counted.

While Walmart and drug stores had limited their colour selections to those that would lead to mass sales, Mink had turned computers and smart phones into beauty aids that offered an unlimited colour palate selection. Users could pull the hex code of any colour found on a website, including Pinterest boards and YouTube makeup tutorials,  or smart phone photos.

Choi said people would like to live in a world where they could take a picture of their friend's lipstick and print it out.

Once users had the colour code, all they had to do was to plug it into Photoshop or Paint and press the print button. In a live demo, Choi showed how simple the process which took only 40 seconds to print a pink eye shadow.