They’re edible, yes. But they don’t light up. That’s fine with us, since the process [Becky Stern] used to make these gummy candy LEDs taps into several techniques handy to have under your belt.
The first part shown in her video (embedded after the jump) is to make a mold for the candies. You probably have a few bags of LEDs in your parts bin. Those along with a trough made of foam core come together to create the form for the silicone mold. After mixing, pouring, and hardening, [Becky] peels the silicone off of the LEDs and sends it through the oven to make it food-safe. Mixing up the candy uses simple ingredients (gelatin, water, and ascorbic acid) but you’ll need to follow the methodology closely to get the taste and clarity you’re used to. Syringes are used to fill the tiny voids in the mold before adding leads which were 3D printed using PLA.
These will be a huge hit at your next hackerspace meeting!
[Photo: Johngineer]
Mmm, delicious PLA.
cool for nerd parties, but I just hope no genius will think giving it to the children would be a good idea
BTW http://reprage.com/post/36869678168/is-3d-printed-pla-food-safe
Eat one with a current-limiting M&M resistor (chocolate cylinder with a brown shell and colored stripes).
OMG! THOSE ARE AWESOME!!!!!!!!
The leads could be made out of melted (and hardened) sugar. That way the whole thing is edible.
^ this
I thought of pulled sugar when reading the post. Even spun sugar would make good leads, in clumps.
Gummies were a great idea, next time instead of 3d printing that shitty plastic, use hard candy pulled out thin, like how a candy cane is made. nobody wants questionable plastic pieces in their mouth, plus the choke hazard is pretty high for children and adults.
>inb4 boobs comments
Even though putting the silicone in the oven makes it food safe I wonder if there is a need to be worried about lead exposure from the LEDs as in the heavy metal kind not the not the printed leads.
what?
the leads could have tiny surface mount leds in one of them and then the other could have a micro battery so when you touch the leads together they light up internally….
That’s actually not a bad idea and it’s a perfect excuse for not making the leads edible.
So, then it’s not edible? You make “edible” candy LED’s, and then make them non-edible? The point being?
LED = Lemon Emitting Diode?
Lemon-flavoured Edible Drops
I bet if you put enough current through them, they would light up.
Obligatory DEC Electro-Vlasic appnote (warning: PDF) http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/WRL-TN-13.pdf
i had printed the connectors with isomalt
Up next, white chocolate breadboard!
Well done!
Edible LEDs could be made theoretically using a biosafe organic polymer.
You can make something very similar using a sub threshold phosphor such as ZnS doped with silver which if you get the proportions right (salt maybe?) responds to heat by emitting stored light like a thermoluminescent dosimeter.
This might last a few minutes or so but would certainly be impressive.
Disclaimer:- Zn and Ag salts aren’t exactly good for you in quantity but all the elements used are basically harmless in small amounts and are used in multivitamin supplements.
So this is where RoHS lead us?
i wish i had these back when i was teaching electronics to undergraduates. with sleight of hand some practice, swap an LED that was just flashing a while ago…
Just like the giant one I made a few weeks ago ^_^
http://electronicmercenary.wordpress.com/tag/edible/