I managed to hack the printer using a serial communication between processing and arduino. In this video , I am using key press “P” to activate the printer.
Video: IMG_0890
I’ve also programed 4 buttons , when pressed , it activates the printing. Pressing each button replaces the current image being shown in the canvas. Example: The image where the beer is displayed prints the color yellow.
You can see the details in the video below:
Video: IMG_2407
I’ve been exploring with different flavors to create the tastes. In order to extract the flavor , I boiled the flavor in a pan. I also used a filter to extract the particles. The hard part is to make the composition neither too think nor too thin/liquid.
I choose to work with these following tastes: Pepermint for Cyan, Hotchili for Magenta, Citrus butter for Yellow and Soysauce coffee for black.
I used a syringe to extract the ink from the cartridge , then insert the flavor by mixing it with the edible ink.
I succeded in printing some soysauce. You can actually taste it and smell it very well. However the others were very subtle in the taste and the smell.
It is more difficult than I thought to print a taste. The problem is that the flavor has to be diluted enough to pass through the ink cartridge without ending up being too subtle. So the flavor ends up not being strong enough.
There is a sponge in each cartridge where the ink goes through. Ingredients such as sugar and oil have a harder time passing through the sponge. Alcohol evaporates.
Flavors with volatile/aromatic particles didn’t work because the flavor is lost in the process.
A lot of chemistry flash backs!
Although , if you smell the paper , it smells like the flavor. But I am not sure if I want to forget about the taste.
I am thinking of using another technique to insert the flavor. I am going to try to create a mechanism using a servo motor or a solenoid valve. I will have to ask Anthony about this. It can be a good method to let liquids go through and stop.
I still want to deal with edible paper. But maybe using this method will be more effective than the printer. The taste would be stronger.
I found this project that is really cool and deals with liquids. It is different in terms of content and concept but it could help me out with the technique http://www.creativeapplications.net/scripts/gowiththeflow-scripts/
Another test to go…
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