As many know my experience with 3D printing has come with mixed results, as the kit I bought with 3 friends required more calibration than I was willing to do and my friend’s Solidoodle proved to be a reliable way to create the objects I needed. I’m still highly interested in the area (I was going to post a review of Microsoft’s 3D Builder but just never found the time to hook it all up) and I strongly believe that the commoditization of manufacturing at the small scale will prove to be revolutionary. One area of particular interest was the idea of a food printer, something that could potentially make a meal out of some base nutritional components.
As it turns out this might be closer than I first imagined (skip to 1 minute in for the good stuff):
NASA stated investigating the idea of 3D printing food a little while ago, investing a small amount of money into research to create a device capable of creating edible foodstuffs on the International Space Station. Primarily this was to fuel a longer term goal to provide food for an interplanetary trip to Mars as its believed that 3D printed food could dramatically reduce waste and improve efficiency with transported materials. Whilst this current demonstration appears to be limited to producing pizza (something which seems a perfect fit for a first run) NASA’s vision is for something far more general and it looks like they’re well on their way to achieving that.
It’s a big step considering that we’ve had printers capable of producing chocolate models for some time, but the leap to other food has proved somewhat elusive. It will likely be quite some time before it gets much more general than your run of the mill pizza however although some of the designs making the rounds are really quite impressive. Time will tell if they’ll ever become mass market devices but I can definitely see themselves finding a home in space stations and high end restaurants looking to create truly unique dishes.
