Laser cut popcorn

[Tim-S]

Is anyone planning to use the FS laser during open house tomorrow?

If not I'm going to bring popcorn and try to pop it with the laser.

[Ray Scheufler]

Its been done before.  You have to unfocus the laser and rotate the popcorn.  You want to heat it to the boiling point, not pierce it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0h_WkJGZ28

Ray Scheufler

On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 2:41 PM, Tim-S <t.she...@gmail.com> wrote:

Is anyone planning to use the FS laser during open house tomorrow?

If not I'm going to bring popcorn and try to pop it with the laser.

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[David Champion]

Sounds very labor intensive. You should make a robot arm that rotates the kernels for you.

-dc

[Tim-S]

On Monday, March 5, 2018 at 2:48:35 PM UTC-6, David Champion wrote:

Sounds very labor intensive. You should make a robot arm that rotates the kernels for you.

-dc

That shouldn't be super hard if you keep it simple. Sweeping arm that disturbs the kernels, and set the laser to raster at high speed?

I know someone popped a kernel of popcorn. I want to pop a lot of kernels of popcorn. Wouldn't it be awesome if the squirrel blower started forcing popcorn out the side of the building?
 

[David Champion]

Uh...

[Benjamin Miller]

You want to pop a lot of kernels of popcorn with 30 watts of power, presumably popping them all at once rather than one at a time.

A typical stove burner will apply at least 1000 watts to said popcorn, and that energy will be transferred to the popcorn through the high thermal mass of the pan and evenly distributed by the oil.  Your laser will be heating a bunch of dry kernels of popcorn, and then they will be cooling rapidly to the ambient air due to the high temperature differential vs a stove pan with a lid.

In summary, it is going to take you a really, really long time to pop any appreciable amount of popcorn with your laser... my guess would be at least an hour to pop a bowl of corn.

- Benjamin Miller <b...@benjamintmiller.com>
________________________________________
A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
    - Antoine de Saint-Exup'ery, In Design

[Tim-S]

Fail. You all were right, this didn't work well: