The world surely is becoming a more exciting place to be in, especially with a new discovery every single day. Now everything seems to be as easy as the click of a button.

With the rise of consumer level printers, the 3D printing industry is witnessing phenomenal amount of innovation. Every week, we are hearing about new applications of this awesome technology. The latest breaking news in the 3D printing industry is the invention of a new printing machine called “Mink”. The brain child behind this innovation is Grace Choi, a Harvard graduate.

Mink was first made public in the TechCrunch NY Disrupt Conference. In this conference, Grace Choi shared the concern that the make up industry charges a lot of premium from customers, for things which are basically free i.e. for the choice of different color shades. This inspired Choi to device a machine that enables the production of lipsticks or eye shadow makeup material in the color of your choice, with just one click on your computer.

Now, you might be wondering about the price for this “difficult to believe” innovation. To the surprise of most people, the printer is priced at a very low rate of $300 and the ink that is required to furnish the finished good will also be competitively priced. The colors will be abiding the standards of FDA.  The next question will obviously be about the ease of operation. The operating procedure is not very difficult, though it can get a lot of UI tweaking to make it look much easier. If there is some color that you find attractive and would love to have a lipstick of eye-shadow of the same. You just need to procure the hex code of the color. Hex codes are codes that enables the computer to identify a particular color. The next step would be just paste the code in Photoshop or paint and fill the work page with that color. Now is the most interesting part, after you hit the print button you actually find a lipstick of eye shadow of the same color in 3D!

According to Grace, the target audience of this product are  girls from the age group of 13-21, who aren’t addicted to some branded product as of now and are free to experiment. Now there arises a contradiction. Girls who can afford this printer are those who might be addicted to a brand and the ones who do not have any brand loyalty and are open to experiment may not have the buying capacity. The other problem for this printer is a bit technical. The base that is used for the production of lipstick is thicker than that used for lighter materials like eye shadow or powder. The series of stumbling blocks don’t end here. The safety and the durability of the products is also questionable. With so many uncertainties, only time can tell us whether this idea is a hit or a flop!

But if Grace can smoothen out these basic issues with Mink, the bigshots of make up industry will have a major reason to worry.

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