Oh my breakfast. Things just got a little crazy and a little awesome. Pancake lovers rejoice, because you can now 3D-print your pancakes onto a griddle in any design with PancakeBot.
Want to slather the Eiffel Tower in butter? Feel like drowning a fish in maple syrup? Well, now you can—pancake style.
What exactly is the thing? PancakeBot is a 3D printer that consists of a batter dispenser and nonstick griddle that prints and cooks custom pancake designs you draw.
The PancakeBot includes software that allows you to draw or trace out your kid’s picture, trace your company logo, or go freestyle with any design you can think of. You can also save your artwork masterpieces on an SD card for later use, too.
The best part is, the shading control. Hit print, and the first lines you draw in the software are printed out first onto the griddle with batter, making the lines darker. The printer then fills in the rest of your pancake insides, which results in a lighter background.
How did you get such fine lines? You can thank the dispenser for such accuracy. With vacuum and compressed air control, PancakeBot squirts out the perfect amount of batter. Since there are tons of recipes out there from gluten-free and such that influence batter consistency, you can fine-tune the air pressure dispenser for batter variation control.
No expensive cartridges are needed. Simply fill up the dispenser with batter and hit the print button to make custom designed hot cakes.
So where did all of this awesomeness come from? Father of two daughters, everyone meet civil engineer: Miguel Valenzuela. In 2013, Valenzuela first created a LEGO pancake printer for his children that successfully 3D-printed pancakes 6 months after development. PancakeBot was revealed at the World Maker Faire in New York that gained a ton of public interest; it was then Valenzuela decided to build a sleeker machine with acrylic materials. And now, we have PancakeBot we all know and love today.
With 31 days to go on their Kickstarter campaign, PancakeBot has surpassed their $50,000 goal with almost 400 pancake enthusiasts backing the project. Even though the Kickstarter rewards of $149 and $169 have been filled, you can still snag a PancakeBot for $179 or $299—two bots for the MSRP of one.
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