At Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the two printers and the candies created by them were on display at the booth of 3D Systems (3DS), a company based in the US and Solid Idea from Australia.
The ChefJet has nothing special in terms of appearance. It is made of white plastic and metal, it looks like any other kitchen appliance. But don’t let the looks fool you. ChefJet is first of many “food printers” expected to make way to our kitchens in future. This printer eats sugar, drinks water and churns out black and white sugar candies with single flavour.
ChefJet Pro, the big brother of ChefJet, can do the same.
“Food is an incredible platform for creativity, experimentation, and celebration and we are thrilled to place these powerful 3D printers in bakers and chefs’ kitchens,” Liz von Hasseln, creative director food products, 3DS, said “we invite leading pastry chefs, restaurateurs and event planners to join us in bringing 3D printing into the kitchen.”
Both ChefJet and ChefJet Pro are aimed at professionals, at least for now. These are costly machines and while 3DS has not yet revealed the exact price of the machines, it has said that ChefJet would cost less than $5,000 while ChefJet Pro would cost less than $10,000.
Both machines primarily support candy designs created using computers. The shape and design candies take will be limited only by the imagination of the chef. Solid Idea from Australia, was showing his company’s latest 3D printer ChocoByte, expected to be priced at just $99, ChocoByte printer can gobble up the liquid chocolate and then churn out cute brown chocolate bars in different shapes.
ChocoByte doesn’t look as polished as ChefJet, which is clearly ready for the prime time explained Karaitiana, the CEO, “we were racing against the time to be here at CES. We put together this particular prototype just days before our flight to Las Vegas.”
ChocoByte is much smaller than ChefJet. Consequentially, it will also create smaller chocolates. It is also like a semi-automatic solution unlike ChefJet that uses a much sophisticated system. To print chocolates bars through ChocoByte, users will have to first heat the chocolate cartridges – Solid Idea will sell 4 for $10.
“Then a user will have put the heated cartridge into the printer. A machine will create a hard chocolate print in the design of your choice in less than 10 min. It will be eatable,” said Karaitiana.
Just like ChefJet, ChcoByte will also use computer assisted designs to create its chocobars. Food items like candies and chocolates look like obvious objects to print.
