Portable printer creates edible art with ease

This new gizmo sounds like just the thing for someone in your life who’s already got everything: a portable printer that puts art on your plate. The EdiBot from iKoffy promises to dish out full-color designs featuring just about anything you can dream up, in a palm-sized package.

It might actually be useful for coffee shops and bakeries too. The compact device uses vegan, Kosher-friendly, FDA-approved edible ink to print text and art on a variety of surfaces and materials, including latte foam, cookies, and even paper, cotton fabric, and skin.

iKoffy’s EdiBot can do detailed small prints at 1,200 DPI, as well as long-format ones up to 4 ft (1.2 m) on ribbons or edible decorations. The printer has a single-pass width of 0.92 in (2.3 cm), and iKoffy says it’s working to enable multiple passes for taller designs.

The EdiBot isn’t the first edible art printer on the market, or even the first portable one. But it might well be the only handheld full-color printer of its kind. It also pairs with a mobile app that includes hundreds of customizable design templates, as well as an AI assistant to generate custom images on demand from your keywords.

iKoffy

iKoffy makes a couple of bold claims about the EdiBot’s printing capability: its 1,200 DPI resolution is said to be four times greater than that of competing products like the US$230 Evebot PrintPen, and a single little cartridge can do a whopping 30,000 tiny prints compared to the PrintPen’s 14,000. I’m no food printer expert, so I don’t know how that’s even possible, but this is the word on the street.

iKoffy

The company notes the EdiBot has been in the works for over a year now, and should begin shipping this September. It’s currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter, where it’s listed at a discounted price of $199 for the printer and one included cartridge, down from its expected MSRP of $399. An extra cartridge can be had for about $70.

iKoffy

All crowdfunding campaigns carry an element of risk, but to that end, iKoffy notes it’s been in the food gadgets business for a while now with a record of shipping products worldwide. The company also delivered on its previous campaign for a smart coffee brewing mug, and sells a range of items online via its own store. We also haven’t spotted any disgruntled customers online thus far.

You can check out the EdiBot and back the campaign over on Kickstarter.

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