YouTuber James Bruton Makes Record Books with World’s Tallest 3D Printed Sculpture

James Bruton began his YouTube channel in 2006 to share videos he made regarding robotics and other hands-on projects. After making a commitment to himself to upload a new video once a week, he has grown his following to just over half a million subscribers with a total of more than 159 million views for his videos. As a result of his success, he has been able to devote himself full time to working on projects to showcase on his channel. But now there is a new reason why people are paying attention to Bruton: he has entered the record books.

Working together with LulzBot and 3DFilaPrint, Bruton has created the world’s tallest 3D printed sculpture of a human. The human featured in his statue is himself, no surprise given that YouTube is the ultimate platform for self-promotion. Using his own likeness also allowed him to avoid any potential copyright issues from other subjects.

The statue measures 3.62 meters tall (nearly 12 feet) and has beat out the previous record holder, held by FabLab Kielce in Poland, which had created a 10-foot-tall 3D printed statue of Polish soccer player Robert Lewandowski. They in turn had wrenched the record from Backface, a British startup, which had created a representation of British TV personality John Bentley that measured just over six feet in height.

Editor-in-Chief of the Guinness World Records Craig Glenday welcomed Bruton to his hallowed placed in history:

“3D printing is a prime example of how Guinness World Records is continually evolving to embrace the latest, cutting-edge technologies. Indeed, that’s why we’ve published our new Science & Stuff book – to capture some of the superlatives emerging from the exciting worlds of consumer tech, gadgetry, drones, 3D printing, and artificial intelligence. We’re all living in the middle of an exciting technological and digital revolution, and we’re delighted to welcome James – and the 3.62 m version of him – into the Guinness World Records Family.”

In order to create the mega-James, it was necessary first for a scan to be created, which Bruton undertook with an iPad provided for the purpose by the faculty of Portsmouth University Creative and Cultural Industries (CCI). They then worked to correct any errors or omissions in the scan before sending it to print, something which was of critical importance as an error at this scale could have possibly been too costly to recover from. The next challenge was to figure out where the statue would live and how it would be transported there. Given the total weight of the filament, over 50 kg (110 lbs), and the size of the print, it became clear that the best option was to print the statue in pieces so that it could be more easily stored and moved about.

Using two 3D printers working around the clock, the project took nearly 500 hours to complete, with a total build time of about two months from start to finish. He said:

“I really enjoyed working towards the Guinness World Records title for this – I’m thinking about doing another one in the future. It took two months and a lot of printing time to achieve the record so I’m pleased to have finally got my hands on it!”

This was not Bruton’s first foray into the world of 3D printing as he has been using the technology to help him create mechanical parts for his other projects for some time now. And for the next few months, while he keeps working, he’ll have a gargantuan likeness, holding court at the Winchester Discovery Center.

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