An engineer has used his expertise to create an accurate and festive 3-D gingerbread model of his summer house using a laser cutter.
Working on the project with his wife, Johan von Konow generated the necessary shapes for the construction in CAD before using a 50-watt laser engraver to cut them out of a flat sheet of gingerbread.
"You can buy pre-baked parts for a standard house, but it's more fun to build your own," said Von Konow. "It would be quite tricky to handle soft parts in the laser engraver without distorting their shape. Therefore we first baked gingerbread dough sheets and then cut the parts with the laser engraver."
[partner id="wireduk"]Von Konow set the laser to 80 percent strength to do the physical cutting, while he was able to add guide marks for the icing decoration using a 20 percent setting.
"The biggest problem with the cutting was the smell," said the engineer. "Lasers tend to create a lot of smoke, and this one was worse than usual. It was something between burned cake and burned hair."
Perhaps unsurprisingly given that description, the project looks lovely but tastes horrendous and is basically inedible. "After tasting a leftover piece we became aware that this house is never going to be eaten."
Plans for building your own laser-crafted gingerbread house are available on Johan von Konow's website — and, if you're after something a little more tasty, a helpful commenter suggests that switching to a beam of around 500 pulses per inch (PPI) could offer a more palatable residence.
