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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?
Hehe!
"It smelled really bad," he said.
Don't tell that a Swiss!
I can see the advertisement now...it's how the civilized cut the cheese.
I've already said all that I have to say.
Someone is going to lose a finger within the first week it is out on the market.
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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.
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
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.
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
"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 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 have created this giant "laser" to threaten the "Earth" with "snacks."
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
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)?
Do not look at cheese slicer with remaining eye!
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Nice. And people wonder why US obesity rates are so high?
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This sig is inoffensive.
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 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/
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."
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.
I've done experiments with 266 nm laser beams. Ultraviolet light makes nearly every organic molecule fluoresce. It is usually quite easy to see the spot where the laser beam (even if it is just a few milliwatts) hits a surface.
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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?
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
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.
It was a feta-compli.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.