Four students from Olin College of Engineering took to pancake art for inspiration for their final project in their Principles of Engineering class. Trent Dye and three of his classmates created the “Pancake CNC Machine,” which automatically ‘prints’ pancakes onto a griddle based on designs created on a computer, according to Boston Globe.
The project, from start to finish, took the students nine weeks, and involved three iterations of the original design and several homemade pancake batter recipes. The prototype was produced with a mere $250, the allotted budget for the project. The device was an intersection of the mechanical, electrical, and programming skills the students learned throughout their course.
Aaron Hoover, an assistant professor at Olin, says, “They did a really great job on the execution, and they took it to a level of finish that is fairly uncommon. And that’s what makes the difference.” One slight catch to the students’ creation is that the pancakes look better than they taste. Kevin Crispie, a co-inventor on the team, says, “We ended up testing the batter quite a lot. They aren’t great pancakes. But they do look good.”