Technology has developed so that we have printers which can render three dimensional objects, but what if you're hungry?
Scientists at Cornell University's Computational Synthesis Lab have been developing a 3D food printer they hope will become commercially available. The machine would allow users to "print" meals using "raw food 'inks'" inside syringes. So, is that "disgusting" or "delicious"?
First, you load the machine with the raw food "inks", then you dial up the recipe, which they're calling a "FabApp" - no doubt trying to catch some of the buzz from the smartphone marketing lingo. Their printer then does the rest. The fab@home project is being developed as an open-source collaboration to share and build the recipes, but users could tweak the food's taste, texture and other properties.
So far, the "inks" are limited to whatever can be anything that can be "extruded from a syringe", which means you're not going to want to make a steak. You have liquidized chocolate, cookie dough, cake batter, and cheese, which ain't quite a three course meal yet, but could keep you fed. It may be encouraging (or scary) to some that they have started to create "domes made of turkey meat".
Their end goal (beyond the technology) is to create 3D printable food recipe social networks with everyone improving on each other's creations. Developers hope 3D printing will "do for food what e-mail and instant messaging did for communication". I say they worry more about making it digestible and less about the sharing component. Most of the posts on Facebook, etc. are useless - I'm not about to use that lowered standard to dictate what I eat.
Scientists at Cornell University's Computational Synthesis Lab have been developing a 3D food printer they hope will become commercially available. The machine would allow users to "print" meals using "raw food 'inks'" inside syringes. So, is that "disgusting" or "delicious"?
First, you load the machine with the raw food "inks", then you dial up the recipe, which they're calling a "FabApp" - no doubt trying to catch some of the buzz from the smartphone marketing lingo. Their printer then does the rest. The fab@home project is being developed as an open-source collaboration to share and build the recipes, but users could tweak the food's taste, texture and other properties.
So far, the "inks" are limited to whatever can be anything that can be "extruded from a syringe", which means you're not going to want to make a steak. You have liquidized chocolate, cookie dough, cake batter, and cheese, which ain't quite a three course meal yet, but could keep you fed. It may be encouraging (or scary) to some that they have started to create "domes made of turkey meat".
Their end goal (beyond the technology) is to create 3D printable food recipe social networks with everyone improving on each other's creations. Developers hope 3D printing will "do for food what e-mail and instant messaging did for communication". I say they worry more about making it digestible and less about the sharing component. Most of the posts on Facebook, etc. are useless - I'm not about to use that lowered standard to dictate what I eat.
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