3-D Printers Are Now Making Hair: Is This the Future of Extensions?

In the wake of Selena Gomez's confession that most of the hair on her head was not her own (opens in new tab) last month, I got to explore the ins and outs of hair extensions (opens in new tab). Two of my biggest takeaways were that 1) Good quality is paramount and 2) They *will* cost you.

And while I'm still totally mystified by how 3D printers actually work, when I learned that they're now printing actual, totally real hair through a process called furbrication (Carnegie Mellon University researchers (opens in new tab) insist this is a real word), I didn't immediately question it.

In fact, I wondered could this be the future of hair extensions? And more importantly, did this technology have the power to make quality hair pieces more affordable?

Alas, it's not that simple. While you can produce hairs of different colors, thickness, and lengths that can be cut, braided, and styled like human hair, these strands are, in fact, plastic—requiring no more than a regular 3D printer and flexible plastic material to be made.

They may look the part for the tiny toy trolls and horses currently donning the sample strands, but what separates these fibers from the synthetic platinum blonde doll hairs on Barbie's head? I'm not exactly sure.

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