Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Hardware Gift Guide
ptorrone writes "Looking to give gifts this year that are open source? Here's MAKE Magazines "Open Source Hardware" gift guide. Open source 3D printers, TV-turn-off devices, iPod chargers, music players, Wi-Fi companions, educational electronic kits and more. Each of the kits, projects and open source hardware gifts in this guide represents more than just a holiday gift, it's a change to support this nascent open hardware movement."
The current issue of Make magazine has a short article on a rapid prototyper some guys built that does selective sintering of powdered sugar! Instead of a laser or electron beam to do the sintering, they created a jet of hot air to carmelize the powder. They've turned it open-source and called it the CandyFab project.
As for using chocolate, I don't know of anyone dabbling in that. But, I suppose there's no reason you couldn't build a fused deposition modeler that uses chocolate chips in a hopper as the raw material. What would you use for support structure?
I think this one counts as "playing around"
http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-chocolate-printer-made-from-LEGO/
The RepRap guys have played around with the IDEA (and lots of other material ideas)
http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/MaterialsScience
And Fab@Home has been used with chocolate - shame it's the most expensive by far.
http://3dprinterusers.blogspot.com/2007/05/more-than-chocolate-cornells-fabhome.html