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Music

Some Dude 3D Printed Rick Ross' Head as a Bronze Coinbank So We Emailed Him a Bunch of Questions About 3D Printing

The Diddy Bank and The Biggie Bank are coming, just wait on it.

As you probably know, Rick Ross' new album Mastermind drops today; did you get your bottle of Belaire Rosé yet? It's pretty good, a bit bitter, but you can drink it at brunch. More importantly, today is also the day that The Ricky Bank dropped meaning there's only one real mastermind out there, and it's Brandon Hixon, who has created "hip-hop's most expensive coin bank."

The Ricky Bank is a 3D printed 420 (Hehe) Stainless Steel "infused with bronze" coin bank shaped as Rick Ross' head. Thankfully, the website explains just exactly how the fuck 3D printing—in this case—works:

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To build “The Ricky Bank”, special 3D printers deposit small drops of glue onto layers of stainless steel powder, one layer at a time, until the bank is complete. We carefully remove these models from the printer. At this stage of the process, the objects are very fragile, similar to wet sand. The bank then goes through an infusion process that replaces the glue with bronze, creating a full metal product. The bank is then processed, sprayed with a sealant, and shipped to you.

And it's all yours for the very ballin' cost of roughly $5000. But ballers, beware: the coin bank is not food safe and is not recyclable, not like ballers really care about recycling anyway.

We had to find out more from the The Ricky Bank creator—and soon to be The Diddy Bank, The Biggie Bank, and hopefully The Ma$e Bank soon enough because, come on, that's my favorite rapper. We hit up Hixon on email, who also works for a company called WE MAKE MUSIC, about the 3D printing process and if we can start printing food yet or what.

Noisey: I saw your site pop up on Twitter this morning. Can you tell me a little bit about where the idea came from?
Brandon Hixon: One day when I was riding around and getting it, I realized I was saving it, so I decided to create a cool way to save some cash.

How did you start working with 3D printing?
I live on the same block as Makerbot and I've been amazed by 3D printing since they opened their doors back in 2009.

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Why did you start off with Rick Ross?
His money talk game is serious and he's a iconic figure. Everyone knows his face.

What other products are you working on at the moment?
Working on some cool merch for De La Soul that should be released soon. Also, The Diddy Bank and The Biggie Bank.

I clicked over to your site, We Make Music; can you tell me a little bit about what you guys do?
WMM started off as a music licensing company; we place music in film, tv, video games and commercials for hip-hop artists. Now we're adding marketing and merchandising to the mix.

In terms of 3D printing, we're all a bit curious about the limits of the industry. Is there anything you can't print?
With 3D printing the sky is the limit, you can pretty much print whatever you can think of. They're working on printing large scale cars now!

How do you think 3D printing will affect the society in the future? For instance, will you only need to buy a printer in the future, and then like, you can print your clothes, your shoes, your food, your TV, etc?
In the future everyone will have a 3D printer just like everyone has a computer or a phone, it will be a necessity.

And finally, how close are we to 3D printing food?
Hopefully not that close, I'm not looking forward to that.

Can someone please make The Ma$e Bank for Lauren? Her birthday is in a few months. She's on Twitter - @LAURENcynthia