3D Chocolate Printer Made from Legos?

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3D Chocolate Printer Made from Legos?

Posted by michael on Friday September 10, 2004 @03:00PM from the mmmm,-chocolate dept.

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.'"

31 of 165 comments (clear)

Not 3D by Oculus+Habent · 2004-09-10 15:01 · Score: 4, Informative

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
1. Re:Not 3D by LuxFX · 2004-09-10 17:22 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  The 3D plastic printer we have at work (granted it's a cheep one)
  
  Can you really say that about any 3d printer? It's like saying, "Yes I drive a Ferrari, but it's one of the cheap ones...." hehe
  
  --
  Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
2. Re:Not 3D by twoshortplanks · 2004-09-10 19:09 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  This is just a prototype. The next stage in development is to have mechanism after each 2D print to put down some form of powder that can support printing things not directly on top of the previously printed layer. This is what real 3D printers do. You then shake out or vacuum out the powder once you're done leaving a proper 3d object.
  We were thinking icing sugar.
  Mark (who hasn't really been involved in this apart from talking to James about it over tea every morning)
  
  --
  -- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
Woah by punkrockguy318 · 2004-09-10 15:02 · Score: 3, Funny

Wow... Very cool. Awesome. Man, I thought I was cool when I made a merry-go-round. sheesh, shows offs...
No Fair! by Bryan_W · 2004-09-10 15:04 · Score: 3, Funny

They included the coral link in the story. Now what are karma whores suppose to do?
1. Re:No Fair! by Daverd · 2004-09-10 15:10 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  They included the coral link in the story. Now what are karma whores suppose to do?
  
  Complain about the coral link, apparently.
Exec Summary by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 15:15 · Score: 5, Informative

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.
"In other news on Wall Street... by Stick_Fig · 2004-09-10 15:16 · Score: 5, Funny

...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.
1. Re:"In other news on Wall Street... by Linker3000 · 2004-09-10 21:42 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  I think you mean "Digital Millennium Candy Act"?
  
  --
  AT&ROFLMAO
2. Re:"In other news on Wall Street... by arose · 2004-09-10 22:04 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  At last we can share physical things, like we do with music now... MY PORSCHE, IT'S MELTING!!!
  
  --
  Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Also interesting by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 15:20 · Score: 5, Informative

Saul Griffith at Mit Media Lab has worked with 3-D lego printers that put down wax and chocolate.
His master's thesis: http://web.media.mit.edu/~saul/mlmasters/sm_master s.pdf
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...
Not far off by GoClick · 2004-09-10 15:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.
1. Re:Not far off by grasshoppa · 2004-09-10 15:41 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Actually, lately, I've been considering exercising a different freedom: The right to bare arms.
  
  They're so damned white, they'll blind our politicians stupid.
  
  Not that we'd notice a difference.
  
  --
  Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Ooh! by iamdrscience · 2004-09-10 15:33 · Score: 3, Informative

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).
1. Re:Ooh! by Guspaz · 2004-09-10 15:51 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Actually it looks like you misunderstand how relative URLs work :p
  
  Most image URLs on sites are relative, which means they don't store the full URL (IE, "http://foo.com/myimage.png"), but instead only the relative path ("myimage.png" or "./myimage.png").
  
  The hostname is assumed to be the current host, unless that's overridden in the HTML.
  
  Unfortunately, the creator of this website made the fatal error of using fully qualified URLs instead of relative URLs for his image files. If he were to realize what was going on, I'd imagine he'd immediately make that change.
  
  So while you're correct in the context of THIS page, in general the Coral P2P cache will cache most images on most sites.
On P2P linking... by Black.Shuck · 2004-09-10 15:35 · Score: 5, Informative

...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:

javascript:l=document.location.href;if(l=='about:b lank'){l=prompt('Input a URL to Coralise:','');};if(l!=''){if(l.search(/\.nyud\.ne t\:8090/)==-1){document.location.href=l.replace(/\ b\/(\b|$)/,'.nyud.net:8090/');}else{if(confirm('Yo u are already looking at the Coral-cached version of this page.\n\nVisit the Coral web-site instead?')){document.location.href='http://www.scs .cs.nyu.edu/coral/';}else{void(0);}}}else{void(0); }

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.
1. Re:On P2P linking... by Black.Shuck · 2004-09-10 15:45 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Oops... There appear to be a few erroneous spaces in that link. Here are the fixes:
  
  about:b lank
  
  Should be...
  
  about:blank
  
  And this one...
  
  /\.nyud\.ne t\:8090/
  
  Should be.../p>
  /\.nyud\.net\:8090/
  
  And this one...
  
  http://www.scs .cs.nyu.edu/coral/
  
  Should be...
  
  http://www.scs.cs.nyu.edu/coral/
2. Re:On P2P linking... by ashkar · 2004-09-10 15:59 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Or if you use firefox, mozilla, etc., Coral has a context menu extension that you can install here.
A sequence of events by iamdrscience · 2004-09-10 15:38 · Score: 5, Funny

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.
What's with all the food articles? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 16:04 · Score: 3, Funny

I guess _someone_ at Slashdot is pretty hungry...
Shit. by antoy · 2004-09-10 16:11 · Score: 4, Funny

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.
Plural.. by WhatAmIDoingHere · 2004-09-10 16:18 · Score: 4, Informative

The plural of "Lego" is, and has always been, "Lego"

Thank you, and goodnight.

--
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Google cache... by llZENll · 2004-09-10 16:45 · Score: 5, Informative

here
Re:editors on drug? by kfg · 2004-09-10 16:54 · Score: 3, Funny

yeah, it can squeeze chocolate, but it's not like we have girlfriends anyway.

Ah, you have yet to learn the proper application of chocolate.

KFG
Feeding time by triffidsting · 2004-09-10 16:59 · Score: 5, Funny

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.
The only important question is... by John+Miles · 2004-09-10 17:44 · Score: 3, Funny

... 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.
Gillette Business Model by cynic10508 · 2004-09-10 17:54 · Score: 3, Funny

Great... You just know that Hershey's is going to charge an arm and a leg for a refill cartridge!
More Pictures of The Printer by twoshortplanks · 2004-09-10 19:14 · Score: 4, Informative

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 Lego! by Goth+Biker+Babe · 2004-09-10 19:19 · Score: 3, Informative

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!
1. Re:It's Lego! by twoshortplanks · 2004-09-10 19:43 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  And the 3d printing team have lots of lego sheep.
  (I can't believe someone had to say "stop spending all your time building sheep and get back to making a 3d printer" to them)
  
  --
  -- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
Actually... by MikeSweetser · 2004-09-10 19:36 · Score: 4, Informative

...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