Photograph by Cody Pickens
It's easy to be impressed by a 3-D fabricator, a desk-sized "printer" that translates CG shapes into physical objects. But it takes someone special to see one and think, "I'm going to make one of those — and, by God, it's going to run on caramel." Someone, that is, like husband-and-wife team Windell Oskay and Lenore Edman. Realizing that a fabricator could be used to make cool art projects, they set out to build their own. After cobbling together a mixture of new and secondhand components (including desk drawer parts and an old HP plotting machine), they discovered the ideal sculptural material: sucrose. "We made a beeline for sugar," Oskay says. It's inexpensive, nontoxic, and readily available — "and when you're cooking, it smells like cotton candy and crème brûlée." So far, the couple's CandyFab 4000 has constructed caramelized versions of things like a Möbius strip, a screw, a dodecahedron, and a caged ball. Now the duo is planning an open source version of their sweet technology. After all, everyone should get a chance to play with their food.
Watch a demo of the 3-D fabricator. For more, visit wired.com/video.
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