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3D Printing in the Kitchen: Pancakes Featuring Your Own Face :-)
Have you pictured yourself covered in yummy just-melting real butter and maple syrup recently? Get the fork and knife poised, because if you 3D print your batter — and your images — just right, that could be in your epicurean future.
Not only is 3D printing by way of the UK’s Kinneir Dufort shaking up Sunday morning breakfast a little, it’s changing the face of the pancake industry — to that of yours and your loved ones. That makes serving up some flapjacks a lot more fun. And 3D printing and pancakes, surprisingly, couldn’t go together more easily, as what would be the heated print bed simply serves as a griddle, with the 3D printer doling out the batter.
Pancake art and 3D printing are becoming a bit more popular, as we’ve reported on recently. With 3D design and 3D printing becoming more applicable to many aspects of daily life, and the 3D printer becoming not only more of a household item but something that can actually produce household items, we are seeing a number of creative processes happening not only in the kitchen — but also in terms of ‘smartening’ up and running the household, from food to 3D printed accessories for your appliances, coordination with Arduino software and the Internet of Things, and more.
Pancakes on a weekend morning are a great way to relax and fill up, but printing out a facial design can be a bit more of a delicate matter than just pouring batter and flipping flapjacks, according to James Torbett, senior electronic designer at Kinneir Dufort, the company behind the new pancake art which allows you to put a name and a face to your fare before you yum it up from your morning breakfast nook. Torbett used digital imaging by combining use of a digital camera with image processing to create pancake likenesses.
While these are just pancakes, this is still a 3D design and 3D printing process and requires a bit of attention to details, timing, and the technology at hand. The batter has to be mixed just right, speed is a factor, and temperature is of course of vital importance — a key factor in cooking or 3D printing.
“The real challenge was to create a program that enables the picture to be completed from start to finish within the exact timescale for the overall pancake to cook,” said Ian Hollister, prototyping director at Kinneir Dufort. “Too little time and the darker tones wouldn’t be achieved, too long and the pancake would burn.”
Reminding one a bit of the technology that allows faces and images to be printed on t-shirts and more, a digital camera is used in tandem with image processors that create the face recognition using computer numerical control and tracking software. The traditional 3D printing process begins to happen with tones as the batter heats and the layers build up, basically building the image of the face you choose to have for breakfast on any given day.
“Our bespoke software turns this into contours for the batter dispenser. The darkest areas are deposited first, through four distinct shades to the lightest areas,” said Torbett.
Due to the high speed at which pancakes cook, timing is indeed everything for the creation of the image to form correctly — not to mention also for the perfect pancake that makes your mouth water with a golden outside and a fluffy inside — all just waiting to hit the plate.
Bristol-based Kinneir Dufort is an award-winning design company with 30 years of experience in product research, development, and innovation. A global company, they work with major companies in a variety of sectors, including the healthcare industry, defense, and security. Accredited with ISO 9001 and 13845 certifications, they are able to help clients with solutions in medical device development as well.
Are you in the mood for some personalized 3D printed pancakes? What do you think of bringing in this level of technology to the breakfast table? Tell us your thoughts in the 3D Printed Pancake forum over at 3DPB.com.
Source: http://3dprint.com/45222/3d-print-pancake-w-your-face/
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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