Print out breakfast with a pancake printer
Brunch for geeks is now even more impressive with this open-source PancakeBot that makes elaborate pancake designs.
In 2010, Norway-based dad and breakfast food enthusiast Miguel Valenzuela built a pancake printer for his daughters. Valenzuela was inspired by an article in Make magazine about a British designer who created a Pancake Stamping Machine out of Lego.
The original video of Valenzuela's first version of the PancakeBot went viral, which just encouraged him to continue tinkering with the design to improve it further.
Valenzuela built his Lego-based PancakeBot with the idea in mind to encourage kids to take an interest in programming, engineering, robotics, and food manufacturing.
Valenzuela recently designed the new (non-Lego) PancakeBot made from stepper motors, Arduino controllers, and clear acrylic. The improved PancakeBot can be programmed to draw out any pancake design including that of the Eiffel Tower.
"It uses two stepper motors and two belt drives to control the location of the batter as well as a batter dispenser unit for batter control," Valenzuela wrote on his website.
While the sleeker and improved version of the PancakeBot recently debuted at Bay Area Maker Faire on May 17, this model is not for sale. However, those who'd like to make their own Lego PancakeBot, can find the instructions available here for free. Amateur chefs, however, shouldn't be too worried about machines entirely taking over the pancake making process -- robots are still struggling to learn the traditional pancake flip.
In addition to his fabulous PancakeBot, Valenzuela also created this short stop-motion film called "Breakfast Gallop" made with pancakes, eggs, bacon and a lot of love. All 50 pancakes used were drawn with PancakeBot, then photographed and animated. Valenzuela shows how he used PancakeBot to make this whimsical animation.