3d-Printers Used To Recreate World's Masterpiece Paintings By Van Gogh And Rembrandt

You can do a lot of things with a 3D-printer - pizzas, invisibility cloaks... guns.

And now it turns out you can even recreate your favourite Van Gogh masterpiece.

Tim Zaman, a Dutch researcher at the Delft University of Technology, has perfected a technique that accurately 3D scans a painting then prints it - brushstrokes and all.

One of the printed reproductions

The scans are accurate to 10 micrometres and prints at 600 ppi.

Zaman took advantage of a period of renovation in Holland's Rijksmuseum to get his hands - delicately - on some of the world's masterpieces.

For us mere mortals not lucky enough to have access to such fine and priceless works perhaps Zaman will let you have the scans if you ask him nicely...