I posted on bread laser printing, fruit printing, computer etching, 3d printing your own guitar, printing your clothing (a next step for TUI), and also about the secret-spying marks left by your printer as you print!

Today, I found this wacky and so cooool tutorial on how to make your own latte art printing machine. Oleskiy Pikalo wanted art work on his latte, so he bought a x-y flatbed plotter (Philips 8155) on eBay and a great book by Matt Gilliland: “Inkjet Applications”!

Here is the result, see the video!

He offers a tutorial on how to build something like this, here you go, so you need (I quote him):

1) An old flatbed plotter (in my case it was Philips 8155) - make sure it has real x-y translation stage. Your best bet is to perform a search on eBay for flatbed plotter. On a good day, you may get a decent fully working plotter for under 100$. I got mine for 175$ with shipping, because I wanted A3 format for later use, and a bunch of pens.

2) Most old plotters connect through GPIB/Serial interface -mine connected through GPIB interface, so I needed a GPIB card, which I also got on eBay. I got my card for around 30$, because the one I purchased was not a popular kind (LTP1 - GPIB).

3) Matt Gilliland’s book Inkjet Applications. It looks like Parallax has this fabulous kit on 40% sale for 59.95$

4) A small 12V relay (my plotter lowers pen by applying 12V to the solenoid). This relay will enable the stream of ink from the inkjet cartridge.

5 ) Edible ink - preferably brown. You can work with coffee directly instead of ink, but the contrast is not as good as wwith ink. Again, I got mine on eBay.

Good luck!

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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