Thursday, May 10, 2007

Tech/Food : Now I KNOW I'm crazy.



OH. or Oy...

I dont know whether to laugh or cry.

I was updating my del.icio.us bookmarks when I came across this.

You may have heard of CAD (computer Aided Design) used by architects.
This link tells us of a CAM project (takes a CAD design and actually MANUFACTURES it in 3-D

However, THIS project is a homemade CAM machine which creates it's models in SUGAR!

That's right! the screw is made of SUGAR...


This is a picture of the SCREW being taken out of the bed of sugar, before it is dug out of the sugar!

Visible on the bottom right, is the "print head", or a heat gun!

In this project, the heat "melts" a 2-Dimensional picture (just like a printer) onto the layer of sugar.

In this specific case, instead of dots, being laid down on the paper, the layer of sugar (in certain spots) is FUSED to the previous layer of sugar, , or the first layer.


this is what the sugar looks like when first melted! Note again you can see the "print head" or heater element here, as it is heating the sugar.

Notice the shallow lines?? the Author says, "Because the hot air gun blows air continuously, it leaves a shallow trail wherever it goes, indicating the toolpath of the heater over the sugar surface."


Here is the finished version of the coil pictured in the above two pictures:

And here is the screw in partial fabrication..

Now I need to make a donut run!

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