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3D Printers Create Edible Objects
MrShaggy writes "An engineering lab and a culinary school have teamed up to construct novel edible objects with 3D printers that use pureed foods in place of ink. From the article: '"It lets you do complex geometries with food that you could never do by hand," said Jeffrey Lipton, a researcher and graduate student at the lab. "So far, we've printed everything from chocolate, cheese and hummus to scallops, turkey, and celery," Lipton told CBC Radio's Spark in an interview that aired Sunday.'"
Nerd: feel like a.. chocolate cheeseburger? *snort* Girl: what do you mean Nerd: it's a cheeseburger, made of chocolate *chuckles* Girl: why is that funny? Nerd: it's- Girl: OK, I'm leaving
Or better yet, just send an unmanned probe with the printer to the destination. Then print out all the passengers.
Does the shape of the food really matter? I think the texture is a far bigger deal.
No matter what shape you put it in ground meat will never make a real steak, no matter what you do with ground carrot you will never have carrot sticks.
Now I am really going to blow you bong water drinking mind, debone a whole chicken as you would for a turducken then bread and fry it whole. A giant chicken nugget that is a chicken!
Your response, was, I hope, "sorry, we can't make out details that small yet"
There was one done quite a bit ago that used sugar as the print material. Wasn't very high resolution, but it worked, and could be eaten. Also, I've heard of Rep-raps using chocolate (and other substances) in the past.
This also doesn't appear very high resolution, so I'm failing to see what about this is first or even particularly novel about it. The only first I see is the specific things they used.
Ah, indeed, I have found a link: http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/candyfab
You could print up stuff using caviar and Kobe beef and it'd still be cheaper than ink refills.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
This will certainly redefine 'Spam', that's for sure.
Tea. Earl grey. Hot.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
Okay, for this to be a reality, we need to get 3-D printing down to at least the cellular, if not molecular, level. (Would quantum uncertainty effects render this impossible?) But this is a nice idea, cleverer than the idea of a Star Trek style transporter. It would be the 3-D equivalent of faxing a letter. Unlike "beaming", 3-D "faxing" does not imply the destruction and subsequent recreation of the original. A 3-D fax produces copies.
This raises a moral dilemma. If I fax myself, let's say, to Alpha Centauri, who then is the real Me, the spaceman or the one who stayed behind? Do I have the right to kill(switch) my other self (the one who stayed behind)? Would I be guilty of murder? Would it even count as suicide? Or could it simply be a form of hi-tech amputation or surgery, getting rid of an unnecessary body (part)?
We've had photo cakes for a while now. An image is printed onto a thin sugar/cornstarch icing "paper" using an inkjet printer loaded with food coloring. This is then placed on top of the cake. You can get food coloring cartridges for some Canon and Epson inkjet printers.
http://www.icingimages.com/info.php
http://www.photofrost.com/
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Does the shape of the food really matter?
I take it you've never had kids.
Mine aren't quite at that age, yet, but I fondly remember bothering my mother to color and cut me pancakes in this-and-that shape of the ASCII characters used in the Rogue tileset, morning after Kindergarten morning.
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.