Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “This Robot Makes Pancake Pictures – Pancakebot”.
Welcome to make workshop, where we check out tools, toys and tech built for makers. Today, we’re going to be looking at a pancake making robot. This is the pancake bot, as the name implies it’s a robot that makes pancakes. Let me take you for a tour around the machine, show you how it works and what the parts are and then we’ll make some pancakes.
Looking at the machine, it looks a lot like a plotter or a 3d printer, and that’s because it has some very similar characteristics. It does have a gantry like you would expect from a plotter or 3d printer. That gives you two axes of motion, but it doesn’t have, of course, a print head or a z-axis really to speak of down here.
The bed is not just a heated bed. This is actually just a griddle for cooking. You fill this container full of pancake batter. You program it in in the software what to do and it lays down the batter and the color can be changed, depending on which batter it lays down.
First, for example, the darker you want lines the earlier in the process you want that batter laid down. If you want a dark outline, you would do that first and then come back and fill things in. It’S very interesting. Seeing this work, it’s it’s a simple concept, but once you actually get into it, you can see that you know they had to go through a lot of trial and error to get it to actually work. The way you would expect it to work, even though i’m describing this as incredibly simple.
There are a lot of variables at play whenever you’re printing with this, and it really does come down to you feeling things out and looking and just seeing if things are going right more than well, for example like in 3d printing, where you refine your settings over Time and then you stick with those settings forever with this, the thickness of your batter is going to change. Each time you make batter even the temperature in the room is going to affect like kind of how thick your batter is or how well your griddle is working. You can adjust the air pressure here, that’s actually pushing out the batter and you can speed up or slow down the machine there.
So while it’s cooking, while it’s actually laying it down you’re, also watching it and adjusting it in real time and saying – oh, you know, maybe that’s extruding a little bit too much, so you turn the air pressure down or you speed it up or something like that. There’S a lot of trial and error involved and that’s actually pretty nice. I didn’t bring it up earlier, but i should say this: video is not sponsored by pancake bot.
However, they did send the unit for us to look at and i’m kind of friends with miguel. The founder, you know, i run into him at a bunch of maker faires and he donated a machine for a contest. I just ran so i may have some bias.
However, i can tell you that i gushed about how awesome the pancake bought was long before i ever knew miguel or before he helped with my contest, so i can legitimately say i think the pancake bada is awesome now. What i find interesting is his approach that he’s taking the company in now focusing on education, putting this in classrooms uh not only as a tool to make pancakes, but you know he’s told me: he’s got all these lesson plans tied to the machine and different things. You can do the machine with the machine, including, like you know, making it play music with the stepper motors and stuff, like that. I really love this kind of out of the box. Thinking with a you know, with the machine whenever it comes to education, i i think it’s pretty cool. What he’s doing some of you are probably already wondering about cleaning as it turns out. This was easier than i thought it would be. Your pancake batter goes in here.
This comes apart for cleaning both ends, which this right here does not seem like a big deal, but my goodness, every clay printer i’ve seen does not do this. They just have a long tube and, if you’ve ever tried to clean a tube like this with something down in it, that is is, like you know, thick like batter or clay, that’s a pain. So the fact that this comes off is so wonderful. That’S me speaking from personal experience.
Anyway, you clean this out nice and easy, and then the griddle itself has a non-stick surface and you clean it just like you would a normal griddle so who should buy a pancake pot? It’S a good question. You know, i think even the people at pancake bot would agree. You’Re, probably not going to buy one of these and use it to make pancakes for your family all the time after the initial novelty of these custom pancakes wears out, and you have to clean the machine each time you’re probably going to go back to making regular Pancakes, it is awesome, it is cool and i’m going to make pancakes for my family, but you know, probably just once or twice. However, what the real use case is is for events and classrooms.
If you have ever seen a pancake bot at an event, you know they draw a crowd like a big crowd and the fact that you can eat the results is like a double bonus. On top of that, if you are in an educational setting or if you’re going to events and need some promotion, a pancake bot is a relatively low cost way to really draw a crowd. And especially, if you combine it with the educational resources, you can even use it to teach some people some things for more information and updated pricing. You should go to pancakebot.com. I believe right now, this whole setup uh. The kit is 449. uh, but again go to pancakebot.com to check for the most up-to-date pricing. Thank you so much for joining us.
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