Lasers and Chocolate
Bailey wanted to learn how to use the laser but had more of a sweet tooth than a project. So we decided to try out etching our logo into Hershey bars.
The first attempt we kind of just tossed the chocolate in there and went for it, using a file we’d previously used to etch wood. It ended up unpleasantly burned. We also didn’t pay too much attention to lining everything up square on this run, so we vaporized a small slice of one paper plate and etched a bit out of the one underneath it.
We also had a considerable amount of smoke pouring out of the chocolate from burning the sugar. At least it smelled fairly pleasant!
Let’s all thank Ray for our awesome laser cutter and the fact he lets us play around with it (and our food) for no good reason.
The second attempt we turned the power settings down by half. Still mildly burnt. Could probably use another halving. Tasted okay. The wrinkles from cooling were a surprise.
Ray got peckish and we had bread laying around so…. toast break!
The logo turned out fairly sharp considering the uneven nature of bread.
For the third and final attempt of the night (for some reason we ran out of people willing to eat the stuff) we inverted the picture to see if we could get less wrinkling. Fairly solid no. The room was also getting warm at this point, so the chocolate wasn’t standing up too well anyway. We’ll probably do another attempt in a few weeks. There are still candy bars after all. We’re going to try fiddling with the power settings, different kinds of chocolate, and with chilling the chocolate pre and post lasering.
Sorry to hear that your project was toast. Better luck next time. 😉
Seriously though, that’s seriously cool.
-Lance