3D Printer to Print Pizza

Jetsons

Just like Mama used to make. That is if your Mama was Rosie the robot from The Jetsons.

QZ.com is reporting that NASA is funding research into a 3D food printer. Anjan Contractor is a Senior Mechanical Engineer at Systems and Materials Research Corporation in Austin,TX. He has received a $125,000 grant from NASA to create a prototype for the world’s first food synthesizer.

Contractor, who has a background in 3D printing, was given this initial grant from NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program. His assignment was to create a system that can print food for astronauts on very super long missions. And his first food? Pizza, of couse. Christopher Mims with QZ.com explains:

Pizza is an obvious candidate for 3D printing because it can be printed in distinct layers, so it only requires the print head to extrude one substance at a time. Contractor’s “pizza printer” is still at the conceptual stage, and he will begin building it within two weeks. It works by first “printing” a layer of dough, which is baked at the same time it’s printed, by a heated plate at the bottom of the printer. Then it lays down a tomato base, “which is also stored in a powdered form, and then mixed with water and oil,” says Contractor.

Finally, the pizza is topped with the delicious-sounding “protein layer,” which could come from any source, including animals, milk or plants.

Check out the prototype below:

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