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High school seniors conquer watery ketchup with 3D-printed bottle cap
3D printers have produced some pretty amazing (and scary) stuff, and now a pair of high school seniors have successfully used the tech to ensure they'll never have to eat a soggy hotdog again. Tired of the watery, separated ketchup you get from a bottle that's been sitting unused for a while, the two seniors went about solving the issue with the help of their school's 3D printer. What they ended up with was a replacement cap for bottles that forces the sauce out through an internal, raised tube. As ketchup leaves the bottle at a higher point, the standing water at the cap end stays inside. The simple but elegant fix may seem like a trivial use of 3D printing, but it's the perfect example of rapid prototyping, and the make-it-yourself attitude the technology is all about. There's even talk of the young dudes turning the project into something of a business venture, but if that doesn't work out, there'll almost certainly be scholarship spots for them at the MIT's ketchup vessel innovation department.
MIT's LiquiGlide could spell the end of slow-moving ketchup nightmares (video)
A team from MIT has decided to end slow-pouring ketchup problems once and for all with its LiquiGlide project. Instead of karate-chopping the 57 logo on the bottle's neck, a super-non-stick coating is sprayed on the inside of its glass container. It's so good that even highly viscous liquids like ketchup and mayonnaise roll out of the bottle and onto your dinner as if it was water. All the chemicals used are already FDA approved, meaning that it's already safe to be used in food production. If adopted, it'd save around one million tons of trapped sauce from being wasted every year. Since we already have finely-honed ketchup-fu skills, we're hoping the LiquiGlide technique also finds its way into peanut butter jars.
Condiment transporting SWITL robot arm gets a gig moving meat, packing boxes (video)
Way back in March, we spotted video of the SWITL, a robotic hand with a penchant for picking up globs of condiments without changing their shape. Neat, yes, but what sort of applications might such a device have in real life, beyond rather inefficient cleanups of Burger King floors? Manufacturer Furukawa Kikou has put the electronic appendage to work, folding meat and packing boxes with bags full of sol-gel substances, without losing the shape of either material. The size of the company is prohibiting sales of SWITL machines overseas at present, but Furukawa Kikou is happy to discuss partnerships, should someone approach it for its raw meat and ketchup moving needs. Exceedingly unappetizing video after the break.
SWITL scoops oozy goop with amazing robotic precision (video)
Look, sometimes, not often, but sometimes we'll miss a truly spectacular and mind bending story that requires a double-back. The SWITL robotic hand is just such a case. The patent-pending technology looks to have been revealed on video back in late October showing the Furukawa Kikou robot deftly lifting a ketchup and mayonnaise mess from a table and then replacing it unchanged from its original shape. The tech was developed for bakeries with the intention of automating the handling of soft substances that were either too malleable or too icky for human hands. Unfortunately, Furukawa Kikou isn't providing any details about the science behind SWITL so we'll just assume that it's Satan's work until otherwise informed. See what we mean in the video after the break.
