Interview with the creator of the first 3d food printer. Part 1
Today, Fabbers interviewed the creator of the world's first 3d food printer, Emilio Sepúlveda. Emilio Sepulveda is the co-founder and CEO of Natural Machines, the makers of Foodini, the first 3D printer that works with sweet and savory dishes. The company is in demand in more than 45 countries, including Russia. Since its founding in 2012, several patents have been sold covering new systems and technologies, the company has been present in the United States and China, and an office will be opened in Moscow soon.
Mr. Sepúlveda loves snowboarding and sailing. He studied at Telecom Engineering and Humanities and has a master's degree in software engineering and a master's degree in business administration from ESADE.
For more convenience, we added the text of the interview under
spoiler
F .: - Hi Emilio, I would like to ask some questions about your amazing printer. Tell me how the idea came to create a 3D printer that prints food?
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ES: - Basically, this was the answer to the problems that we had. One of the founders had and has a vegetarian bakery. That is, they make vegetarian cakes without any ingredients of animal origin. And the problem was that the production was far from him and it was necessary to freeze the cakes, and send them frozen. Actually, this process is very expensive and the logistics are very expensive, and the ingredients are very cheap, so we can send the production, the ingredients and send the recipe, which is the basic information so we decided that the best technology we could use is one that we use (now), and then we decided to do it.
F .: - Emilio, tell us about your team: who is working on the creation of a 3D printer. And maybe there is even a chef in your team?
ES: - So, we have an interdisciplinary team: there are engineers, programmers and nutrition specialists. And we involve local universities, outside people, that is, we work with industry partners and they help us find new concepts and new ones. recipes.
F .: - How do you see business development in Europe and in Russia?
ES: - Well, it largely depends on the country and region. For example, Mediterranean countries have barriers, many cultural barriers and economic barriers. In Northern Europe, they are more inclined to enjoyable products and the country where we see the smallest barrier is Russia, where people seek to introduce new technologies to try new things and experiment. It was a bit surprising for us, we expected that it would be in Germany, but in Russia it is more in our case.
F .: - Emilio, tell us more about how a 3D printer works and what it can create, and the most interesting thing - what consumables does it use?
ES: - At the heart of the device has 3D printing technology from the inside and another technology that allows us to work with food. So, it works so that you would fold the food in the form of capsules, or buy already pre-filled capsules, then load them into the device up to five different types, choose a recipe and just type. And this is just a kitchen appliance, this is not something that would be created for engineers, for example. This is for normal people, and the range of products that we can print starts from very liquid, like sauces, to those that may have hard chunks, or softly - hard, like meat with nuts. Something that is not really the type of food you expect to see printed out.
F .: - Emilio, tell us what difficulties you encountered when printing food. And the most interesting - can you print a few layers in height?
ES: - Basically, the most difficult thing is to accomplish this when you have something that includes various ingredients in one recipe and, at the same time, is volumetric, high.
In this case, you must have a very fine calibration of the ingredients and, of course, you must be patient, because more details and more volume means more time. So, trying and setting up the ingredients for these recipes, you can spend some time when you first print.
F .: - Thank you! Tell me if you cooked with the help of Foodini "tapas" (this is a Spanish national dish).
ES: - Yes, it depends on the type of tapas you want. For example, if you make a ham it does not make sense, you just cut the ham, that's all. But if you want crackers or you want potato chips, or you want to make something out of pate, or something like that, maybe it makes sense to use something like a printer.
F .: - And the next question is more for engineers - what difficulties have you encountered while developing a printer?
ES: - Thus, we have the final development of the device, and now we are creating production
so that we are going to start mass production and start shipping to our customers.
')
ES: - Basically, this was the answer to the problems that we had. One of the founders had and has a vegetarian bakery. That is, they make vegetarian cakes without any ingredients of animal origin. And the problem was that the production was far from him and it was necessary to freeze the cakes, and send them frozen. Actually, this process is very expensive and the logistics are very expensive, and the ingredients are very cheap, so we can send the production, the ingredients and send the recipe, which is the basic information so we decided that the best technology we could use is one that we use (now), and then we decided to do it.
F .: - Emilio, tell us about your team: who is working on the creation of a 3D printer. And maybe there is even a chef in your team?
ES: - So, we have an interdisciplinary team: there are engineers, programmers and nutrition specialists. And we involve local universities, outside people, that is, we work with industry partners and they help us find new concepts and new ones. recipes.
F .: - How do you see business development in Europe and in Russia?
ES: - Well, it largely depends on the country and region. For example, Mediterranean countries have barriers, many cultural barriers and economic barriers. In Northern Europe, they are more inclined to enjoyable products and the country where we see the smallest barrier is Russia, where people seek to introduce new technologies to try new things and experiment. It was a bit surprising for us, we expected that it would be in Germany, but in Russia it is more in our case.
F .: - Emilio, tell us more about how a 3D printer works and what it can create, and the most interesting thing - what consumables does it use?
ES: - At the heart of the device has 3D printing technology from the inside and another technology that allows us to work with food. So, it works so that you would fold the food in the form of capsules, or buy already pre-filled capsules, then load them into the device up to five different types, choose a recipe and just type. And this is just a kitchen appliance, this is not something that would be created for engineers, for example. This is for normal people, and the range of products that we can print starts from very liquid, like sauces, to those that may have hard chunks, or softly - hard, like meat with nuts. Something that is not really the type of food you expect to see printed out.
F .: - Emilio, tell us what difficulties you encountered when printing food. And the most interesting - can you print a few layers in height?
ES: - Basically, the most difficult thing is to accomplish this when you have something that includes various ingredients in one recipe and, at the same time, is volumetric, high.
In this case, you must have a very fine calibration of the ingredients and, of course, you must be patient, because more details and more volume means more time. So, trying and setting up the ingredients for these recipes, you can spend some time when you first print.
F .: - Thank you! Tell me if you cooked with the help of Foodini "tapas" (this is a Spanish national dish).
ES: - Yes, it depends on the type of tapas you want. For example, if you make a ham it does not make sense, you just cut the ham, that's all. But if you want crackers or you want potato chips, or you want to make something out of pate, or something like that, maybe it makes sense to use something like a printer.
F .: - And the next question is more for engineers - what difficulties have you encountered while developing a printer?
ES: - Thus, we have the final development of the device, and now we are creating production
so that we are going to start mass production and start shipping to our customers.
This was the first part of an interview with Emilio Sepúlveda, the founder of Natural Machines. Exactly a week later, Emilio will show us the office and even reveal the secret of what Foodini looks like.
Especially for 3D printer shop
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/362997/
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