TS: Introducing Cornucopia, the food printer

[Theboss]

US scientists have introduced a concept design of the "Cornucopia" or Digital Fabricator, a "personal food factory" able to print food from specified ingredients, with no waste at the point of cooking.

The food printer is at the concept design stage, and would work by storing and refrigerating ingredients and then mixing them, cooking layers of the mixture and printing them onto a serving tray. The concept design was introduced by two graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Fluid Interfaces Group Media Lab: designer/engineer in algorithmic image process development Amit Zoran, and designer and research assistant Marcelo Coelho.

The food printing process begins with selecting the required food canisters in which ingredients are stored and kept refrigerated. Ingredients are then fed into a mixing chamber and the mixture is extruded and deposited in layers of various and complex combinations of ingredients. During deposition of the layers onto the serving tray the ingredients are either cooked or cooled in the chamber or by heating/cooling tubes attached to the printing head.

The researchers say the printing process brings cooking technologies into the digital age and allows entirely novel textures and flavors to be created that would otherwise be unimaginable and which are unobtainable through traditional cooking techniques. They say users would be able to control the nutritional value, quality and flavors in each meal through a touch-screen interface and Internet connectivity, which would allow them to manipulate parameters such as carbohydrate or fat content and calories. The design also allows for the food printer to be able to automatically order new ingredients and suggest an alternative ingredient if one runs out.

3D printers already exist (see, for example, PhysOrg’s article on 3D printers for moon bases and the affordable desk top 3D printer). The printers are becoming more common and are already being used in applications such as creating three-dimensional prototypes or models.

The researchers hope their concept will "provide a glimpse at the new aesthetic and cultural possibilities, which can be brought forth by a new, digital gastronomy."
http://www.physorg.com/news199080001.html

[Transfuse]

Oh, look! Another incredibly expensive and utterly useless invention from Japa-- wait, what?

[Anthon]

I keep being amused by the 3D concept. It is promising, yet will NOT work for everything.
I am actually very skeptical about the food part, mostly due to the fact that food has a certain way of being, e.g. no uniform, or airy (bread). Same with meat, If we would have found an artificial way of recreating real (taking aside the starch and colour and flavour additives), we'd surely have used it. Then still 3D printing food is also tough, due to the nature of food. how are you going to keep lets say, a pudding from running instantly after being created.

This could be for creating food, as in the context of healthy or nutritious stuff. But I'd still stick with the normal food

[Theboss]

I don't think that they are trying to make real food but vitamin holding mashy stuff.

[Anthon]

Yea as I guessed too, Im not seeing bread being 3D printed just yet
Still, Id rather have real food, dunno it has something more fancier then the whole nutritious, yet looks like nothing

[Theboss]

This kinda reminds me of startrek replicators, or atleast a very crude version

[Anthon]

I once saw a docu of the house of the future. with also a 3d printer. You buy the blueprints and voila it prints your stuff.
Only fail I see there is that many items these day, especially the finer ones are treated to tons of things, like tensioning. Or metals to entire pathways to different material properties. No way a printer can function that way

[Zero]

I'd like to see some examples of what it would create.

A nice cheesey chocolatey bready peanut buttery mash could be quite nice. But I could do that myself.

[Anthon]

and would cost you a whole lot less

[Zero]

and I imagine this thing would be annoying to clean

[Anthon]

or refilling, So many flavours, so many canisters imagine wrongly filling one. hmmmm what the hell does this ice cream taste of? fudgy spinache ummmmm

[Zero]

You make an excellent point, just how would this fare as an ice cream machine?

[Anthon]

well, considering ice cream is water or milk condensed and treated in a certain form, it could have future. Unless it generates heat itself and makes the ice melt when layered

[Zero]

Yeah, maybe "instant" icecream would be tricky.

Might be cheaper to just get a blender.

[Theboss]

Could be a nice idea.