For our wedding, I wanted to scan my wife and me in 3D, so I could have 'us printed' in color for on the cake... I used a Kinect to perform the scan, with the Skanect software that you can download for free, with the limitation of exporting up to 5000 faces. I contacted them and they gave us a 50% discount on the full version since we are a Fab Lab... It's not very expenive soft, and frankly it works very well. You'll need a good graphical card if you want it to run smoothly though. We had someone walk around us while we held still while he was holding the PC and the scanner... In retrospect it would have been better to put us on a slowly rotating platform and have the scanner be fixed, for it puts less strain on the PC.

We got printed on a Zcorp 650, which is a powder bed printer that is capable of doing full color. Objects printed with this machine are somewhat fragile, for it's just powder that is fixed with a resin. Printers like this are still quite expensive, ranging from 20 to 60K depending on the resolution and the size of the printbed.

For my wedding, my wife asked me to wear a ring during the ceremony. I happen to not like wearing things around my fingers, but I agreed, if I would make the ring myself.. She agreed, so I modeled my ring in 3D using Rhino, and had it 3D printed at a partner lab here in Grenoble where they have a EBM printer that prints directly in titanium, a Arcam A1. Quite the expensive machine, and on top of that not easy to use. Set up time is important and calibration takes time.

It came out quite nice :) I did not polish it are subject it to any treatment after printing... I happen to quite like the somewhat rugged and sparkly surface it has when printed. It's a really cool ring, and super light but I would not wear it often, even if I liked doing so. If something happens that makes your finger swell up, they normally cut anything that might be around your finger with bolt cutters in the hospital... I do not see them cutting this with bolt cutters... I have been building 3D printers as well, for a while now... Check out the Mechanical and Machine Design page for more on that.