Has it ever crossed your mind that everything you see for sale–no matter how mundane–is someone’s life passion? Or, at least, their work passion. Somewhere as we speak two or three people are in a room trying to figure out how to make a whoopie cushion for two cents less than before. Someone is touting the virtues of the newest design in egg cartons. The guys that make the tube that carries your money to the bank teller at the drive through window? They exist, too.
It is natural for us to think about improving 3D printers but most of us print plastic. We might wish we could print metal. But researchers in a few places are printing cheese. We didn’t say hackers with the muchies, we said researchers. There’s a colorful slide show from the University College Cork in Ireland, for example. They printed cheese at two different speeds and used a laser scanning microscope and a rheometer to analyze the results. We’ve seen rheometers in plastic factories, but never in the kitchen. Meanwhile on the hacker front, apparently spray cheese cans work as an easy cold extruder (see video below).
If you find the subject fascinating, the February edition of the Journal of Food Engineering has an article about how 3D printing effects the structure of cheese, which looks like it is from the same group. The article isn’t available for free, although you can request a free copy on ResearchGate. We guess they really like cheese in different shapes. Their conclusions? Irregular-shaped fat globules made the printed cheese softer than regular cheese. Who knew?
We feel compelled to point out that there are things in a 3D printer that are probably not food safe so we wouldn’t eat anything that came out of our hot end. What comes out of the cheese can extruder is probably no less edible than it would be outside the printer, although exactly how edible that is would be subject to debate. Perhaps you are better off printing pancakes.
Great a 3D printing Article one can digest.
Some food for thought
Either way you slice it, this is one sweet hack.
Enough with the cheesy puns
Ahh… spray cheese… An abomination nobody outside the US can really understand…
Trust me, most of us don’t understand it either
Spray ‘cheese’, just like spray foam and shaving cream, is not food.
So what is it for then? To hold the door frame in place?
It think it was originally created as bait for mousetraps, but even the mice won’t eat it. So they put it on the store shelf between the fake butter and the fully-hydrogenated shortening and surprise! People buy it and then complain about chest pains.
I’m a hypocrite though. Ate a wrap with “89% DV of sodium” today from the convenience store, everything taste like salt now.
its for plebs
I agree completely.
Tell me more about “Vegemite” you mentioned?
Or those crazy English breakfasts, while criticizing Americans for putting honey on their granola.
I like the person in the background annunciating the “fault status” lol
I’m glad this is being looked in to, finally stick it to big “cheese” and telling them we will not conform to the shapes they deem best for us!
Could not see anything that even closely resembled cheese in this article or even contained cheese as an ingredient.
The spray cheese contains cheese as an ingredient. Read the label.
“What is my purpose?”
You make a whoopee cushion for two cents cheaper.
“… Oh my god.”
You totally made my day! :’) Wubba lubba dub dub!
Is… is this a Trump joke?
“what the fuck”
Yea, sounds like he’s messing with a 3d printer!
ugh this happened like more than 2 years ago…
Yeah, I thought I saw that somewhere before, too.
From now on I will never complain about ABS being difficult to print with.
http://hackaday.com/2015/03/31/fail-of-the-week-easy-cheese-printer-says-no/
It’s been here before.. still funny though :D
I was just about to say as much. Repost, but I’m not even mad. I love this doofy-ass machine.
needs an upward pulling spring on the spray activating arm. this could be adapted to whip cream too!!
What is the best printing bed to use?
By printing bed I mean cracker, wafer, crisp…
Why isn’t the can mounted at an angle so that when the nozzle is activated it is perpendicular to the printbed?
anyone else thinking of that robot arm from the first Iron Man movie? Idkw but this reminds me of that.
Cheese!
Ireland?
IRELAND??!!??
NO NO no no NO no NO NO NO!
This has gotta be Wisconsin!