Here’s a bit of an odd one, but cool none the less. The Cornucopia is a concept design for a personal food factory, sort of a 3D printer that prints food.
Made by Marcelo Coelho and Amit Zoran the cornucopia uses an array of food canisters that individually store and refigirate the ‘cooks’ chosen ingredients. Then these ingredients are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate combinations of food. The food is then heated or cooled by Cornucopia’s chamber or the heating and cooling tubes located on the printing head. This fabrication process not only allows for the creation of flavors and textures that would be completely unimaginable through other cooking techniques, but it also allows the user to have ultimate control over the origin, quality, nutritional value and taste of every meal.
Its seems like something from star-trek, but it would be great if they start making these things for real.
Here is a video of a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, an Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer, a HP Scanjet 3c and an array of Hard Drives playing Big Ideas: Don’t get any a version of a song by Radiohead. The video is made by James Houston and It’s amazing what people are able to do with pieces of old hardware and a bit (maybe a lot) of time. This video is also a great example of imaginative recycling, even if it’s not the most useful of employments.
Enrico Dini from Pisa in Italy has decided to build whole buildings using sand or even moon-dust. His 3D printer like machine, The D-Shape, sprays a thin layer of sand with a magnesium-based glue from hundreds of nozzles. The glue binds the sands into a solid rock like material, that layer after layer can build up creating anything from furniture to sculptures and hopefully someday full buildings. According to the creator, the d-shape process is four times faster than conventional building, costs a third to a half as much as using Portland cement, creates little waste and is better for the environment.
But Dini has bigger plans than just building houses here on earth. He’s talking with La Scuola Normale Superiore, Alta Space, and Norman Foster to modify D-Shape to build with moon dust. This would make moon-bases much more plausible.
This handmade epson ink cartridge lamp is made from just that, and it looks wierdly cool. Its fairly expensive if you want one at $200, but so are the cartridges that its made from. Its the second best thing you can do with your empty ink cartridges, the first being sending them in to us to recycle.
Another video of the HP slate has been released demonstrating the HP Slates’ flash capabilities. HP seem to be marketing against its rival the apple iPad, which doesn’t support flash, apples’ CEO Steve Jobs said this was because the technology was slow, buggy and was vulnerable to hackers. But with HP having such an advantage, it seems the Slate has allready won this mini PC tablet wars. The video promotes the many things that the Slate will be able to do thanks to flash, and in a way it also promotes the many thing the iPad can’t do becuase it doesn’t support it.
I admit that the video does look a bit… fake, but it still points out the things that the Slate will be able to do.
Are you sat at home bored, wishing you had something creative to do. Well if you have the Internet and a computer then all your problems are solved. Just go to Paperkraft, this great blog provides you with printable model sheets in the form of a PDF of anything from Pokemon to model cars. All you need is some scissors and some tape to make hundreds of models from just paper. I think I’ll be spending hours on these thing from now on.
This concept by Jon Cumberpatch is not really a printer as such, well it is in a way a printer but it’s not, Let me explain. The ScribbleBot is a wireless printing device that follows a preset drawing path downloaded from the internet, the idea is that the printer does the drawing but you have your hand on it so that you learn how to draw. I suppose it could work if you did the same drawing over and over again. But is it that useful really, I’ll let you decide that for yourself.
This braille printer concept by Chinese designer Danni Luo that could help the blind distinguish similar items using printed braille labels. The user can input information using the built in microphoneand this information is then embossed in braille onto a 25mm x 50mm label that can be stuck onto items that are hard to tell apart such as cds, medication bottles, files, etc.
I bet that at some point in your life you’ve wondered what would happen if you put an ink cartridge in a microwave. Actually the though probabily has never crossed your mind, but I’m going to show you a video of someone microwaving a cartridge anyway. (Don’t try this at home)
It’s roughly how I imagined what it would look like, a burning plastic mess in a microwave.
Some of you may remember the posts about the two portable printers: The PrintStick and The Stick POP concept. I’m sure one question must have passed through you minds as it did mine at the time, who really needs a printer so much that they need to carry one around with them. But then I saw the following video on youtube and realised that maybe some people do need a printer that much.
At starbucks it not rare to see the odd person working away on a laptop while sipping on a latte, but this guy actually sets up his own printer to print out some photos. What I dont understand is why he went through all that trouble just to print some photos, maybe he doesnt have the internet at home, but he still could have saved the documents on his laptop and printed them at home, or maybe he’s just crazy.
This guy either needs to get himself some office space or a portable printer.
