Introducing Cornucopia, the food printer | Hacker News Reader

Introducing Cornucopia, the food printer

phys.org

46 pointsDanielRibeiro14 comments

One of the concepts:

"Digital Chocolatier Prototype

The Digital Chocolatier is a prototype for a machine that allows users to quickly design, assemble and taste different chocolate candies. This machine is composed of three primary elements: a carousel of ingredients, a thermoelectric deposition cup and a user interface. Through a graphical user interface, users can select and combine the ingredients housed in the different carousel containers to create customized candies. The carousel rotates to extrude these ingredients into the thermoelectric cup that rapidly cools and hardens the chocolate, making it ready for consumption. The interface also makes it possible to save and rate favorite recipes for later use." -- http://www.cmarcelo.com/cornucopia

I can actually see how that could work.

This is just a concept.

However, the "burrito bot" exists:

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/burritobot-precision-torti...

And its inventor says that the results are kind of nasty. There's a lot more to food than just nutritive compounds.

Sorry, call me old fashioned (and I love my Star Trek Replicator), but I really like my food unprocessed, before cooking.

I really love to mix ingredients as building blocks of a great, nourishing meal. Not industrially manufactured so called food.

Let me add in Lexx, the sci-fi show, and their food printer thingy as well.

Technically, that was bug juice.

On Futurama they had a robot that prepared cocktails. It's the same basic premise.

Counterpoint - as a molecular gastronomy enthusiast, I'm very excited about this and similar developments.

I've already seen the huge opportunities that comparatively simple techniques like sous-vide cooking have afforded me, and I've eaten at restaurants like the Fat Duck which turned a lot of my concepts about food on their head. A food printer sounds like a fascinating way to develop new flavour combinations, textures, presentations - I can't wait.

NASA just funded a Texas company to investigate feasibility of 3D printing food for space missions:

http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/home/feature_3d_f...

Reminds me of "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" [1]

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0844471/

The article is from 2010. Is there any sort of follow up?

This one appears to have lived and died as a prototype. Any mention of it after this article has only referenced what original information and images are available on the prototyper's 2010 site. [1]

Fab@Home seems to be closer to digitally printing food, though it doesn't seem like any time soon: "Lipton thinks that fabricating a dish of steak and potatoes from scratch is still 15 to 20 years or more in the future." [2]

[1] http://www.cmarcelo.com/cornucopia/

[2] http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/2013/03/19/3d-printing-ta...

Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

“Coffee, Jamaican blend, double-strong, double-sweet.”

TL;DR; It's just an idea.

Which any good entrepreneur knows is as valuable as leaves on a tree.

Implementation is whats important.

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