Move Over, Ice Cream Man: An Ice Cream 3D Printer Now Exists!
There’s a 3D printer that prints your breakfast, one that lays out your latte art, and another that preps your lunch and dinner. Now the latest in “There’s a ‘bot for that” technology rounds out your daily meal regimen by printing out the dessert that makes you and I scream — and now we all scream for an ice cream 3D printer!!!
Dreamed up by three sweet-toothed MIT students, the high-tech froyo dispenser was made by hacking a Cuisinart soft-serve machine to extrude frozen ice cream in fun shapes (scoops are SO 2013). A video of the printer in action shows it casting the hyper chilled cream into the shape of star, a form perfect for slipping in between two cookies to make an epic ice cream sandwich.
As much as the news make us kids-at-heart lick our lips with excitement, TechCrunch reports that the trio has no current plan to make the 3D printer kitchen counter-ready. Don’t let our dainty doodle fool you — the machine currently looks like a junkyard monster IRL with its printer stashed inside a Kenmore freezer that’s topped with the hacked Cuisinart dispenser and a compressor that houses a liquid nitrogen tank. Hey, whatever it takes is fine by us!
But the inventors might as well leave that next step up to the imaginations of the new wave of techies and tinkerers. “We were inspired to design this printer because we wanted to make something fun with this up and coming technology in a way that we could grab the attention of kids,” wrote Kristine Bunker of the MIT team. “We felt that it was just as important to come up with a new technology as it was to interest the younger generation in pursuing science and technology so we can continue pushing the limits of what’s possible.” What’s possible might be that kiddos one day won’t have to chase down the ice cream truck in order to enjoy a Spiderman-shaped sherbert. But until then, Dippin’ Dots still reigns supreme as the official ice cream of the future.
What would you dream up to be 3D printed next? Truffles? No-bake cheesecake? We’re obviously hooked on the high-tech dessert angle. Share your thoughts about 3D printing in the comments below.
(h/t TechCrunch)