Slashdot Mirror
3D Chocolate Printer Made from Legos?
enrico_suave writes "Whoot.org (linked via Coral P2P Cache because the poor guy is hosting on a ADSL line) has cool design pics, a now removed video clip, and some interesting details of the process. From one of the plog entries: 'We've developed a print head that will print 5mm 'pixels' of the consumable. It basically acts as a pump. It's a medium sized lego gear (driven by a worm gear attached to the motor) with four axles that repeatedly squeeze and release a pipe attached to a funnel that holds the consumables. a half-rotation of this wheel yields a blob.'"
It's not a 3D printer. It only moves on two axes. The chocolate is somewhat thick, but it's still just one layer. A nice design, though.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
will as slashdotting be something that makes james go whoot?
Wow... Very cool. Awesome. Man, I thought I was cool when I made a merry-go-round. sheesh, shows offs...
They included the coral link in the story. Now what are karma whores suppose to do?
Nice cache. This whole thing is absolutely pointless without the website.
Edit > Find in this Page
..Wait! I just did >.
"Mirror" > Next.
"The Text you entered was not found."
Please change above.
Sorry! (^_^)
From the glance over the page I took:
The printer is made with two controllers, one for each axis of the printer, which communicate via IR. The X axis is the master, and sends commands to the Y axis controller. The Y axis controller is on the print head itself, where (I suppose) the X axis controller is on the case. Standard plotter design, really. The print mechanism is four axles that rotate and squeeze a tube filled with melted chocolate. Black & Green 75% cocoa, if it means anything to anyone. 5mm dots, but that's sufficient to make a decent picture.
I didn't see any pictures of the device. There were some images of the controller motor setups from Mac Brick CAD, but no real pics. The video was removed from the original site, so it didn't get mirrored.
...the price of chocolate has suddenly skyrocketed to $100 a pound due to its newfound usage as printer ink. Lexmark has patented the new chocolate-printing technology, and their lawyers plan to sue Nestlé for patent infringement for selling chocolate that works on its system under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
Saul Griffith at Mit Media Lab has worked with 3-D lego printers that put down wax and chocolate.r s.pdf
His master's thesis: http://web.media.mit.edu/~saul/mlmasters/sm_maste
is about "Towards Personal Fabricators: Tabletop tools for micron and submicron scale functional rapid prototyping".
I'm more intested in putting down plaster myself.
Then you can cast metal in it...
He complains about connecting in Pittsburgh on the way to SF in his latest post. Actually, it is not a bad place to kill time. They have free wireless in the middle core.
You know that really don't seem that far off. Not with confections maybe but it's almost gotten this bad. You should all move to Canada. Or vote. Damnit you Americans need to take a stand against your corrupt politicians. Write more letters, not emails.
how could a story like this one get onto /. front page, it's nothing more a 2 axis lego printer with a an exaggerated name (there is one on the back of lego mindstorm invention retail box, and you can build one from the step by step instruction that comes with ULTIMATE BUILDERS SET (3800)) yeah, it can squeeze chocolate, but it's not like we have girlfriends anyway.
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
Looks like a fatal misunderstanding of the Coral P2P cache. Coral only caches the page/file linked through it, not the images, video, etc. on the page. So people going to the page will be able to read what he says about it, but his ADSL connect will still be slammed on all the images (it's slow now... surprisingly not slashdotted yet).
Also, since Coral doesn't cache links, anybody clicking on his links to look at anything other than the one page linked to by slashdot will further increase the load on his server (or more likely just be disappointed and continue the DoSing of this poor guy's DSL line).
...it would be nice to see Slashdot using Coral-links *before* an article goes live, instead of "Oh yeah, whoops... We get a lot of visitors, right? Better quickly edit a P2P link in there before someone notices the new arti..."
Here's a JavaScript Bookmarklet I made to make Coral-linking a cinch:
Put that in your Favorites or Bookmarks -- make sure it is a single line of text, not those multiple-lines. Then just click it when you want to see a cached-version of the page you are currently looking at. Using it on an already cached page will ask you if you want to visit the Coral web-site.
hey, just use the ultimate mirror: google. http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl%3Awhoot.org+l ego&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8
I found the articles and pics. Sweet.
(I would throw it on my own server, but not ready for getting slashdotted myself).
This is what went through my mind during the split second as I read the title.
"3D Chocolate Printer"
What the crap? Somebody made 3D printer out of chocolate?
"3D Chocolate Printer Made from Legos?"
Made from legos? What? This person made it out of chocolate legos? Insanity. That is so awesome.
And then a second later I realized what it actually meant and while it's pretty cool, it just couldn't live up to my above first impressions. That said, I'm going to go see about making some chocolate legos.
Opera doesn't like it. It tries to download rather than just render.
Test your net with Netalyzr
I never thought it would come to this but I just fell in love with a printer. :-P
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
I guess _someone_ at Slashdot is pretty hungry...
Just when you think you've gotten used to the zany Slashdot titles, you get '3d Chocolate Printer Made From Legos'. We're officially on another dimension now.
The plural of "Lego" is, and has always been, "Lego"
Thank you, and goodnight.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
What's this about a motor??
Nice try, but everyone knows that Real Men only
program printers in Pure Lego.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Teacher
Kid: The dog ate it.
Teacher: What have I told you about missing homeworks? Im sick of your excuses.
Kid: Its true this time. Honest. I printed it out with chocolate ink.
Teacher: *Slap* Thats enough. Principals office now!
------
beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
don't you think your first sentence necessitates the second one? as in, no shit sherlock.
You should find a new way of coming up with headlines apart from tacking a question mark on the end of any given sentence?
It doesn't make sense to use queries in that way?
You should use a full stop or even an exclamation mark?
"3D Chocolate Printer Made of Lego!"
Much better?
What is a plog?
I know blog
I know wiki
I even know "bliki"
what is plog?
here
I gather from the recent two stories that the /. editors are hungry - whose turn is it to feed them?
Non, je ne veux pas coucher avec toi ce soir.
But that is the best headline ever.
-Spexx
... does the printer support proportional rendering of chocolate superscripts in Times New Roman?
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Great... You just know that Hershey's is going to charge an arm and a leg for a refill cartridge!
Plog? What the hell is that?
This guy a relative of Mr. Wonka? As for me I wait for a 3d lego xerox machine.
These are some development pictures I took of the print head testing. Note at this stage James, Nicholas and Leon were playing with the consistancy of the chocolate and managed to print something that didn't totally look unlike something much more worrying.
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
It's not Legos. It's like sheep. I have one sheep. You have one sheep. We have many sheep. This field is full of sheep. The printer is made of Lego!
Here's a couple of more recent pictures that I found on my digital camera. You can see the whole printer (with chocolate) printing in these shots.
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
...it's "LEGO bricks" or "LEGO pieces". Not Lego, or Legos, or even LEGO. LEGO pieces/bricks, to review to the company (which should always be capitalized) and the actual objects themselves. This is straight from LEGO (who really wants it as "LEGO® bricks" but you can't have everything :))
Mike
>Black & Green 75% cocoa, if it means anything to anyone.
:-)
I'm guessing that it means Green and Blacks chocolate. G&B make some of the best organic chocolate around in my opinion. I wonder however if they did extensive scientific testing before they settled on the relatively high cocoa content 75% stuff. I think I should apply for research funding to look into this in more detail
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
And yet I keep reading the word 'Legos', which makes no sense here. Is the term officially different in the US, or have you merkins been getting it wrong all the time (unthinkable!)?
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
... I really want to see the user's face when he prints something, and sees the whole printer turn into a hot steaming pile of stuff =)
Then imagine getting a support call like "URGH! MY PRINTER TURNED INTO JUICE!!!", it is something that won't happen everyday!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
The dog really did eat my homework!
If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it? ~ Albert Einstein
Adding "ii" makes anything a plural + youre cool 'cos you speak LATIN!
I can see potential with this invention. Take the basic idea then utilize it to decorate cakes and confections with. Print your loved one's face on a triple-layer chocolate cake for their birthday and watch as their jaws hit the floor with astonishment. I can see dollar signs perking already!
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
On the picture site it says that mixing water and chocolate (to dilute the chocolate) is a bad idea. Usually, this is done with milk, because of solubility of fat components or whatever.
Anyway, a guy I know is in the 'chocolate decoration' business. He works for a chocolate company and designs new desserts, and good-looking chocolate items for exhibitions and magazines. As you may know, photos in magazines usually aren't of the _real_ food (because this would look unattractive), but highly processed. Like roasted chicken is covered with brown shoe shine to make it look more 'tasty' (in a magazine, that is). I kid you not.
Anyway, this guy told me that if you add a small (critical) quantity of water to molten chocolate, it solidifies to something he called "concrete". He told me that it this happened, it was impossible to get it out of the jar, and it had to be thrown away. I have tried it and not succeeded, maybe because I used the wrong type of chocolate. It is not something you want to happen in a printer...
Z
This is the best way to be a frog...If the output bugs you, just eat it! Also, it beats a shredder for disposing of the output.
Yeah you're right but you are fighting a losing battle (or should that be 'loosing'?). Look what they did to 'couldn't care less'.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?