Slashdot Mirror
The Cheese Slicing Laser
purduephotog writes "Xiaochun Li of The University of Wisconsin-Madison has come up with the ultimate gift for those high-tech wine and cheese connoisseurs: A cheese slicing laser. More detailed information is available at Optics.Org."
"Basically, the cutting process is cold laser ablation, like that in laser eye surgery," said Li. "At 266 nm it gives a very good clean cut, although going deeper than 10 mm is difficult."
Now how am I supposed to cut my 10 pound wheels into Valentines decorations?
Somebody throw me a brie!
Hehe!
"It smelled really bad," he said.
Don't tell that a Swiss!
The thing is useless. It takes forever and a day to do any slicing, and it won't slice through anything too thick.
All I want is a frickin' cheddar block laser-carved into a Borg cube. Is that so hard?
I can see the advertisement now...it's how the civilized cut the cheese.
I've already said all that I have to say.
What will rich people think of next?
"It smelled bad."
Awesome.
My cheese grater isn't laser-guided, but it is highly powerful. And it can run Linux!
Sincerely,
Seth Finklestein
Acclaimed Humourist
I'm not Seth Finkelstein. I still speak the truth.
Someone is going to lose a finger within the first week it is out on the market.
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
we just need to get some frickin sharks to put the frickin lasers on their frickin heads!!
Join the TWIT army now!
But for home use?
Not going to happen in the us at least.
The legal ramifications and potential misuse will make it unlikely (as cool as it would be)
to ever to be offered to consumers.
Bring it on!
Now if they'll just invent a laser-powered washing machine we'll be making some real progress.
How's it do on the salami? What I REALLY want is one that could do both.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
Man, this would have been great back a few years ago when I was working at a plant that packaged natural cheese. The most automated process we had was using pnuematic cylindars to push a 40# block of Cheddar through a frame with criss-crossed stainless steel wires. I can just imagine how much closer we could have hit the weight tolerances using lasers... Plus you don't have to stop and clean a laser beam every once in a while..
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer
Finally I can appropriately slice ghetost!
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
I've always wondered about the smell when one of my co-workers said "awww, who cut the cheese?"
and now I know it's because someone was using the wrong frequency of laser. If I use ultraviolet lasers, my farts won't smell.
Thanks for the informative article.
(...or have I missed something completely?)
TDz.
Now all we need is a corkscrew that doesn't leave floaty bits in the wine and we're all set.
Must have...must have...must have...must have...
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
At first, Li tried using a traditional commercial laser that uses heat to cut by melting or evaporating; it fried the cheese.
"It smelled really bad," he said.
Yeah, it smells really bad when I cut the cheese too.
"At first, Li tried using a traditional commercial laser that uses heat to cut by melting or evaporating; it fried the cheese.
"It smelled really bad," he said."
Well duh..
Thats what you get for cutting the cheese.
the ultimate gift for those high-tech wine and cheese connoisseurs
This is from Wisconsin... Madison at that. No connoisseurs of anything within 100 miles of that city. Except for maybe pr0n. There's a restaurant there nicknamed "Smut and Eggs" that features a nice hearty breakfast, and big screen porn.
Maybe it was just my eyes jumping around but did anyone else read "Chinese slicing laser" ....had me worried there for a second
I think it was Xiaochun Li and Cheese slicing laser
They will have one for home use.....hopefully just before christmas.
Evolution or ID?
"At any other university, people would have just laughed. But this is Wisconsin. It's cheese. And this is no laughing matter"
Why is it tagged science? It should be tagged funny ..
all the "cut the cheese" jokes that are bound to pop up in this thread.
i prefer fresh cheese curds myself... on fries, with gravy on top.
Laser cut cheese. Wow. This world is going to hell, quickly.
IAALS.
"In a country where you can buy cinnamon dental floss, cheese in a spray can, and edible womens panties, are people really breaking their balls to save nine cents on a fucking phone call?!"
Well, now we can add cheese cutting lasers to that list.
Join the TWIT army now!
I'm glad to see that research funds are being used to develop a frickin' CHEESE SLICING LASER. What a great way to apply technology! In addition, this GREAT new invention will continue to propagate the belief that everyone in Wisconsin is a cheese obsessed hick working on the farm all day!
I have a cheese slicer that is one the old wire kind and its a bitch to keep clean. Those old chees slicers are a health risk to a certain extent because there is always trace slivers of cheese embedded in the wood and along the pivot joint for the slice wire. Of course the component isnt dishwasher safe and the parts where the cheese sticks are too small for even one of those green scrubbies. so I say BRAVO LASER CHEESE SLICER INVENTOR PERSON!
// Empires come and go we live forever
I wish I could get paid to aim lasers at blocks of cheese all day...
It must be Thursday... I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I have created this giant "laser" to threaten the "Earth" with "snacks."
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
And another Chinese guy had a cheese-slicing hat.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"At any other university, people would have just laughed. But this is Wisconsin. It's cheese. And this is no laughing matter," said Xiaochun Li, a mechanical engineering professor and laser expert.
If you could see some of the guys and gals where I work, you'd know that cutting the cheese can indeed be a very serious matter. The server room is, shall we say, a bit "close."
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
Now I want one! All I can think of is reenacting the scene from Goldfinger where they attempt to kill Bond with the laser that would slice him up the middle starting with his naughty bits. The plan is foiled (of course) but you get the idea!
Li tried again using a new class of laser that emits light in ultraviolet, and therefore shorter, wavelengths. That laser, known as a cold laser, cuts by blasting apart the molecular bonds that hold materials together.
By breaking molecular bonds in the cheese, wouldn't that alter the chemistry of the cheese where it had been cut? Could this inadvertently produce carcinogenic compounds (like when you burn meat)?
Call me when they have a people-slicer. No more waiting in queues with my new light sabre (I wonder if the name is taken?)
Yes.
tried again using a new class of laser that emits light in ultraviolet
Using a non-visible laser can generate much more accidents that regular lasers because operators and people around may not see where laser is beaming to until the damage is already done
Do not look at cheese slicer with remaining eye!
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
There's a hole in my cheese !!!!
Nice. And people wonder why US obesity rates are so high?
--
This sig is inoffensive.
I can just see someone winning a lawsuit over this product... or atleast trying to. hah
- It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. - Alfred Adler -
What many people miss here is that such a laser would be used in an industrial setting, not in the home. The upshot of all this is we get better sliced cheese for a lower price - and hey, not getting sick from contaminated cutting wires is a bonus!
This is a manual virus. Copy it to your sig and help me spread!
Perhaps if you spent more time actually learning at school than playing you wouldnt be as far down on this list, but who cares about statistics right ?
"Patterns such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison motif were drawn on CAD software and then transferred to a workstation consisting of a flashlamp-pumped Nd:YAG laser and an xy table holding the cheese. The laser produced 10 ns long pulses with an average power of up to 10 W at 355 nm and 3.5 W at 266 nm." And this will work in TV Shop?
"At 266 nm it gives a very good clean cut, although going deeper than 10 mm is difficult."
make it slice chunks from a 20 lb wheel of baby swiss, and i'll be happy. 10mm thick cheese is not that impressive.
I mean for fuck sakes geeks! How many Bond movies do you need to watch to get a hint that there is a market demand? I've totally lost count of the times the DEA MI5 or FSB have had me manacled to a post kicking the fuck out of me and I'm thinking like "shit ... if only I could use my Rolex to slice off these handcuffs I beat you round this cell motherfucker"
So they do invent it and whats it used for 'CHEESE'!!. For fuck sake - I'm going to hunt the inventor down and whack him - the stupid fuck.
Ahhh... our education tax dolars at work. And they say higher education is feeling the pinch of state debt.
"Science has come up with a new way to cut the cheese."
:)
And,
"It smelled really bad," he said.
Case Closed
As they say, only in Wisconsin
This is why California will never overtake Wisconsin for cheese production. We take our cheese seriously! Sure, California may be producing more milk thanks to their farming factories, but their cheese is weak. Take their pepperjack for instance. In Wisconsin, that stuff has bite. In California, it tastes like those stupid shredded cheeses. Weak man, weak.
Oh, and don't believe all those commercials you see about how cows are happier in Sunny California and are so glad to get away from frigid Wisconsin. Those cows are roasting inside their factory farms where they have to stand on cement all day. At least in Wisconsin, we keep our cows in pastures.
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I'm up to here with articles on Slashdot that oversell an item.
Saying that it makes a great gift made it sound like something already in production, or at least imminently so.
If it can't yet slice through a block of cheese, then it's hardly a cheese slicer, is it?
Granted, I suppose there's something to be said for having slices of cheese cut into neat shapes. Oh, wait, my bad. There really isn't. As far as I'm concerned, shaped cheese is just one luxury that kids today will have to do without. When I was young, I got a normal square piece of cheese put in my sandwich, and that was if I was lucky!
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
I'm no laser expert, but by the description in the article, it sounds like this kind of technology could be applied to all sorts of food. If it isn't actually burning a slice, but rather "blasting" the molecules apart, couldn't it be used for meat, bread, whatever else has similar issues with bacteria?
Seems to me the higher energy costs in these factories would be offest by the gain in work hours that would have before been used for cleaning, disinfecting, sharpening, replacing etc of the blades.
Cool as this might be, it's the wrong tool for the job. Waterjets are waaaaay better for things like this. Faster and no smell. Have a look at: http://www.flowcorp.com/
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
My co-worker that graduated from UW-Madison already gets made fun of too much. Today is going to suck for him.
He looks like the kind of guy who will always be looking for a better way to eat cheese...
I have a plan. Using mainly spoons, we'll tunnel our way out of the city...
Foreman: "Bobby 2-fingers."
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
The expenses of buy a laser and feeding it with energy don't cover the costs of cleaning the blades once in a while.
And where all that dirt that need to be avoid comes from, the only thing you're cutting is cheese
except that you would end up with cheese mush....
Got Code?
Fricken' sharks don't eat cheese.
A laser cutter is good for food processing in general. No blade to clean, no blade for bacteria to cling to. I can see uses in other food processing besides cheese. Anything that can cut with out the possibility of contaminating anything else, cheese or otherwise, is a good thing.
Woah! They made Michael Jackson out of cheese!?
Oh wait, that's just some ad.
And just how long will it be until the military-industrial complex puts this technology to its inevitable use... weaponry? The idea of a hand-held weapon that can blast apart your molecules is enough to frankly worry me.
Of course this invention will not go outside the US! otherwise any importing country could be blasted by the US because they are buying weapons of mass destruction!!!
the article did state He believes that the work could point to a new and lucrative market future for lasers. "The food industry could be a huge market for lasers just like the semiconductor industry," Li said. "We've also been asked to cut meat and potato with a laser but we haven't done that yet."
So if this happens, we might see "a fine assortment of ginsu kitchen lasers (as seen on TV)."
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
Could this inadvertently produce carcinogenic compounds (like when you burn meat)?
Probably. Scientists are aware of the problem posed by the accumulation of health risks of this scale and are working on reducing the consequences, but so far they have found no permanent solution.
No, my University can't do cool stuff like UIUC scientists, we get on the front page of /. because of some blasted cheese slicing laser! I feel sick....
No mush. I've seen waterjets cut a fresh doughnut into 5 concentric rings. Perfect, clean cut. The water jet itself is very,very fine. Extremely high-pressure waterjets can cut through steel as well as cheese.
See subject line.
Sent from your iPad.
Slashdot servers are working overtime so every geek can come up with creative, and not-so-creative, 'cut-the-cheese' jokes. I'm not going to lie, it was my first instinct too. Stop what you're doing and back away from the 'cut-the-cheese' cliche. You're only hurting yourself man!
Okay, now use numerical control devices to make cheese sculptures of the Simpsons.
I would hate to have seen the beta versions of this. Talk about setting yourselfup for one hell of a cheesey mess.
Pretty Pictures!
This is Dangerously Cheesy.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
This would make for a couple of great "Behold the Power of Cheese" commericials...provided you don't tivo/replay skip them that is
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
This is already being done to french fries to make sure that they arn't too long. They pass down a belt and a laser will cut them if they are too long. I guess McDonalds etc have all sorts of specs about what size the french fries need to come in. A quick google should be able to find these for they have been around for a while. They were even mentioned on the TLC show Modern Marvels (along with fun slow mo video).
-Benjamin Meyer
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
The LaserMonks are in Wisconsin, and just about everything there revolves around cheese. I'm sure they'd find a use for one.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
...your assistance is needed at the snack table!
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
Extra! Extra! Laser Monks Cut The Cheese!
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
By breaking molecular bonds in the cheese, wouldn't that alter the chemistry of the cheese where it had been cut? Could this inadvertently produce carcinogenic compounds (like when you burn meat)?
It sounds like it might, although the article didn't really give enough information to tell. In a nutshell, when you cleave cheese apart with a mechanical cheese cutter like a knife or a wire, the only thing you "break apart" (using the term loosely) is Van der Waals forces, and those do not hold the atomic components within molecules together (as covalent or ionic bonds do) so the action does not generally result in chemical change. Long-chain polymers will get broken too, but they typically have the same chemistry whatever their molecular length.
If the laser is truly breaking the bonds of non-polymeric organic molecules then this doesn't sound too healthy chemically, but that is not the only way that a laser might cut without burning. It is possible to imagine rapid vaporization of water or of other volatiles in the material causing sudden expansion which would cleave sections apart through vapor pressure, in a manner very similar to mechanical cutting, and hence safely.
We'll have to wait for further information on what is really going on before we know whether there are any concerns about chemical side effects.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I'm sure it will. Only problem is that we will eat soo much cheese that we will die from obesity issues before the cancer has a chance to get us.
Yes! Some idiot losing a finger is funny...what do I care if it doesn't happen to me or my family members?
Hmmm.. You guys are restraining your selves
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
So are we slicing cheese at the speed of light here, or slicing light at the speed of cheese?
"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus
oh. Lasers. Cheese. What the hell?
My bad I saw xiao and I jumped the gun just a bit.
This
You can cut with a lot less energy, just as fine and it is sterile as well. You can add gritt to such jets and the just steel.
This has been around a long time. Why do we need lasers?
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
With an XY table (as mentioned), Camera, Some custom software, perhaps, you could reduce fat content in steaks by using the laser to break down the fat. Trim the steak on the edge and reduce the marbling and reduce the fat. Enter the reduction in %, and the laser does the work. Weigh the drippings to veryify the reduction. Though I like a well marbled ribeye, with this system, you may be able to make a steak more consistant.
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
...where's the video!?!?
"And we're happy here, but we live in fear, we've seen a lot of temples crumble..." - Concrete Blonde
The ABC News article makes it sound like the laser was used to cut a block of cheese up into thin slices. This is not the case, according to the optics.org article. In reality, they've successfully cut patterns in a thin slice of cheese (making a dinosaur, letters and numbers--kids like that stuff), without using a stainless steel die cutter. In fact, the laser can't really cut deeper than 1 cm, less than 1/2 inch. So, slicing up a big block of cheese with a giant laser beam in an industrial setting, let alone in your kitchen, will have to wait.
Fine, but I wonder what has Einstein to do with this modern inconvenience!? Have a cheese icon people, for CowboyNeal's sake! Please!!
And you're surprised because?
At this very moment, Alton Brown - who never buys a kitchen gadget that has only one use - is coming up with more things to slice with this puppy.
Will W's store have them in stock?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Your pneumatic cylinders and steel wire (or in this Wisconsin guy's case a die to stamp out the cheese shapes) would be about one zillion times cheaper in terms of capital outlay, operating expenses, and maintenance.
If I'm not mistaken, these are the same sort of lasers used in tatoo removal and/or laser eye surgery. Both procedures are crazy expensive, and a large part of that cost seems to be due to the laser.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Cork Free Wine, eh? Meet the Rabbit..
c tv iew.jhtml?sku=BP310
I love this thing as it makes opening that 4th bottle painless and cork free.
http://www.sharperimage.com/us/en/catalog/produ
No more cut fingers or messed up corks. And no, it's not that other 'rabbit' you are thinking about.
"It smelled really bad," he said.
Who cut the cheese?
I can see it now - http://www.versalaser.com coming out with a whole new line of kitchen attachments for their product...
... or to your or your family's members? ;)
I seriously doubt Cali will ever overtake anything. On the other hand, with the Govinator in charge, they might take over the world, but that's only aquiring the power to rule, not replace. They might tell you how to make your cheese, but you're right when you say they'll never replace Wisconsin.
- Dan
Well. Whad'ya know?
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
OK I was having fun with the submission. I mean, if there isn't enough reason to poke fun at a laser that slices the cheese...
I can't really see this making into the consumer realm. at 10 watts / 20 hz it can only cut Anyways, seriously, I was just having fun with the implications of a cheese cutting "lazer"
Wisconsin is America's Dairyland!
My taxes pay for these fantastic inventions!
Wisconsin truly is God's country!
Kenny P.
Visualize Whirled P.'s
I seriously doubt Cali will ever overtake anything
They currently produce more milk than any other state in the U.S. (Wisconsin included). What's interesting is that if you go a little farther north to Canada, they actually cap how much milk a farmer can produce. If he produces too much, he has to throw it away. Anyone caught selling milk beyond their cap could face serious fines. As a result, Canadians focus on breeding pretty looking cows instead of heavy milk producers. That's why (if you have a trained eye) Canadian cows are usually more slender and dainty than U.S. cows.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Juries are used to living with knives and 9mm semi-automatics, but the laser is new and sounds dangerous. Therefore you could quite easily sue someone over a laser injury and win. If knives or 9mm semi-automatics were just being released into the world now, there'd be huge legal problems.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Your women as well...
It depends. The more conservative ones who live out in the country are usually not bad looking. However, the heavily liberal ones that live in areas like Madison tend to look the part. (read: Fatter than the cows.)
The "ostehovel" as we call it here in norway is much cooler ;P
Image of the ostehovel. It's a norwegian invention too.
Seriously, we use it almost every day to put cheese on our bread.
Who ever decided there should be no bacteria in the cheese ? You know, if there's none of those, the cheese has no taste...
As someone who dislikes cheese with a passion I say it's about time that someone invented a tool to help rid the world of this scourge.
You ever try to clean 3 day old cheddar off a knife blade? I bet this was the driving force behind the invention of the phaser on Star Trek. In such an enlightend society as that you'd never see Picard hacking off a hunk of brie with a hatchet. Riker maybe...but never Picard.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
"At any other university, people would have just laughed. But this is Wisconsin. It's cheese. And this is no laughing matter,"
o du cts_id/229
Actually according to
http://www.cheesesupply.com/product_info.php/pr
it is.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
When can I get the home edition for cutting my Velveeta loaf?
Grommit!. Let's go somewhere where there's cheese.
of course it would be from wisconsin.
...why there are moderators out there who feel the need to mod highly rated posts as "Overrated"? Does the high rating REALLY kill anyone? Especially when I'm trying to make a point here? And how come these guys continue to have mod points? Shouldn't they have lost them due to meta-moderation?
*sigh*
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Could this advance have come from any other place than the University of Wisconsin?
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
mostly accurate...we won't overtake anything because we're already ahead.
thanks for playing.
I've lived in Northern California. There is little if any cement to be found, and the cows certainly don't get to stand on it.
Try going there some time, if you think that cows in California don't live in pastures. I can assure you that there are stretches upon stretches of highway in California that are nothing but highway and cows in pastures.
Isn't this the same laser they were working on in the move Real Genius ?
Here's the complete article for THE LASER CHEESE RACLETTE.
Looks like the Swiss got there first, almost 10 years ago in fact.
I feel my dreams of becoming an evil supervillian are very close to being realized :-)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
...screaming, "Cheese it! It's the cops!" or "You're really cheesing me off" while wielding this deadly device, carving little Joker symbols into people's chests to go with the Joker grin o' death.
I'm from Wisconsin and a big fan of kitchen implements, so I thought this was a great article.
http://www.strausmilk.com
-- Aaron
There is little if any cement to be found, and the cows certainly don't get to stand on it.
Those guys aren't the big producers. The big ones have large farming buildings, but you never see any cows. That's because there's about a thousand cows inside these concrete and steel barns that are constantly being run through milking wheels. (A milking wheel is a giant turntable that allows cows to be lined up, loaded, mechanically or robotically milked and unloaded in a very efficient manner.)
I used to work as a technologist in the livestock industry, and I remember when these big farms went up. Last I heard, Iowa was supposed to become the "Next Big Milking State". Not sure what happened to that.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Eh, it slices through the molecule bonds? Are that the ones that keep the molecules together or the atoms of the molecules? And will this not create by products?
:) And the laser will probably not be up to to cutting through Dutch 1 year (+) old 48+ cheese.
I hope that these lasers are not too power consuming or using wrong materials. It would be a shame if a lot of polution was produced just to accomodate some stupid marketing hype. Can't they think of something more usefull than cutting freaking dinosaurs in cheese?
Oh hell, most of you will have never taste real cheese anyway
A dutch cheese head.
http://www.westbycreamery.com/
Their cheese curds are the best I've tasted anywhere. Even Carr Valley cheese doesn't come close.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
No, Mister Cheddar. I want you to die!
This could be a seriously bad idea. What if the cheese slicers with their star wars style weaponary joined forces with the toasters and internet enabled refrigerators? The begining of the end of humanity the revolt of the machines.
I for one welcome our new kitchen appliance overlords.
On the other hand it opens up a whole new culinary experience.
Anyone for Cheese Plasma.
siggy played guitar
slaughtering them.
would you like to make a phone call?
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
... since the laser-sliced bread!
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
Will the cheese cutter be available on thinkgeek?
It was a feta-compli.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
The only bonds you're going to cut are those that have an energy less that that of the photons you're using. The intermolecular disulfide bonds that apparently hold dough together (which Google suggests have energies on the order of 10 J/mol) are much weaker than those between, say, carbon and nitrogen in amino acid molecules (on the order of 400000 J/mol).
I thought the same thing about water jets when I read the article. Many, many,years ago,I worked in a factory that made corrugated boxes (not cardboard boxes, as I was corrected many times the first month or so. A cereal box is a cardboard box.) The corrugated boxes are made from two or more sheets of paper with one all wavey, or corrugated. (And for those wondering, most boxes are made from 3, 5, or 7 sheets, with every other one being corrugated. However, some boxes had the corrugation exposed on the inside.)
They use a huge machine called a corrugator that takes rolls of paper and forms them into the blanks later used to make the boxes. Since the rolls of paper are 8ft high or so, they have to run several jobs at one time to reduce waste. A wheeled slicer was used to cut the blanks parallel to the paper path. I forget how they were cut across.
I remember the 'wtf' feeling I had when I was told they were going to replace the slicers with water jets. I couldn't believe they could cut paper with water without it getting wet and had to see this. After I witnessed this spectacle myself and saw the dry paper, I was told the pressure is so high that the water molecules are not in contact with the paper long enough to be absorbed. Whether that was true or not was irrelavant, the paper was still dry.
While this reduced the cost of sharpening the slicers, it wasn't free -- there were electricity and replacement nozzles to pay for. I don't remember how cost effective it was. This is probably true of laser slicers. The cost of generating the laser beam v/s the waste and maintenance of more mechanical means will determine what applications this is suitable for.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
No, not making enormous swiss cheese, but for popping popcorn! (can also be used to vaporize a human target from space).
--Joe
Actually this is quite a brilliant idea... next comes the laser that cuts bread and toasts it for you!!! Better patent that idea before Amazond does. The funny part, most asians are lactose intolerant!!! Definitely can tell they've been influenced living in Wisconsin!!!
I can easily acquire a tec-9 semi automatic machine gun If it's semi-automatic, it's not a machine gun. It has to be full auto for it to be a machine gun by definition. It's only dangerous in the hands of people who have no clue of their proper use.
And here I thought they'd never find a way to make cheese a carcinogen.
~To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. -Yann Martel
Abrasive Water Jet
I'd be more intrested in a laser lawn mower. Less Noise, less weight to push around, etc. and I imagine that if you had a flat enough lawn you could mount it on a track on the side of the lawn, so all you'd have to do is push a button.
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
No mush. I've seen waterjets cut a fresh doughnut into 5 concentric rings. Perfect, clean cut. The water jet itself is very,very fine. Extremely high-pressure waterjets can cut through steel as well as cheese.
However, this is not to say it would be a good idea to cut cheese in your jacuzzi.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
"It smelled really bad," Cheddar is just not made to melt - use something decent and Li would have never changed the wavelenth!
what happens if a little kid or someone accidently cuts off their finger? with a standard wire slicer, it's hard to cut yourself on, but with a laser slicer, if you do cut yourself, how will you get your finger re-attached especially if the laser does too much damage to the tissue?
God I wish I had mod points. This was one of the funniest posts I've ever read.
why redundant - this was the first (of many) comments posted that said the same thing..
Why not use a string to cut chees? It works for my Kraft it would sure work on yours
I camembert it anymore!
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I'm not sure I would trust a jet of water to cut exactly the correct depth into the cheese.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Damnit, I knew my puns wouldn't make the grate. :-(
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
What about to try it the other way? Mount it on a track on the side of the lawn, press a button, and THEN have a really flat lawn! :)
Cheese plasma? Couldn't that be a way to produce REALLY thin culinary-grade cheese slices by epitaxial growth from vaporized cheese? :)
I would wager that the water jet you saw was also a might faster than 1mm/sec.
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
When can I get one of these mounted on a robot that will carve my Thanksgiving Turkey for me?
Oh yeah. I can't recall the exact cutting speed, but you are left with the impression of serious speed.