Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Evil Mad Scientists print a gigantic sugary
mathematical formula
Not all low-cost food printers use a nozzle. Lenore Edman and Windell Oskay,
the founders of a relentlessly innovative small company Evil Mad Scientist,
invented CandyFab, a 3D printer that uses a heat gun to melt raw sugar into
rock-hard intricate shapes. Their design goal was to create a low-cost food
printer that could use low-cost, recyclable material.
Their solution was inspired by industrial-scale 3D printers that use a laser or
light source to irm up powered polymer or metal. CandyFab uses a heat gun to
melt sugar, or what its inventors call “selective hot air sintering and melting” to
fuse raw sugar. CandyFab creations have a rough, stone-like appearance, or
what a technologist might describe as a low-resolution shape. The printer uses
a blend of open source and commercial software.
Edman and Oskay created the CandyFab out of common household objects.
The heat gun to melt sugar was a $10 air heating element, what Windell described
online as the “baby sister of the one in your hair dryer.” They attached the heat-
ing element to a cooling fan to control the temperature of the sugar during the
printing process. Next, the Evil Mad Scientists attached the entire contraption
onto a mechanical system recycled from two old HP plotters. They created the
body of the CandyFab from wooden boxes covered with heavy canvas stitched
together on a home sewing machine.
Heat gun caramelizes sugar to form 3D structures, no assembly
required
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