Kickstarting a keyboard-shaped waffle-iron

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Does it come in Dvorak?

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having burned twice in the 2 crowed funding projects I backed, and having seen quite a few vaporware projects, I say never again

I don’t know, it’s just cast iron. Would be hard for them not to deliver on it. Personally i would totally back it but money is tight this month, but if the campaign is successful then do what i’ll do and just order it online later…

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Having been burned on waffle irons before I’m holding off, too.

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Looking at the pictures, my ADHD addled brain thinks this is the best idea ever, and I want to own one sooner than later…

And then common sense asks, “really?” as if I don’t already have too much whimsy in my life? This is like the metal version of cat videos on the web. I think I’d rather try finding a real problem to solve.

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Sweeeeet! :smiley:

Also, a thought. What about a built-in thermocouple well? For less experienced cooks it would be a handy thing to attach a multimeter with a thermocouple.

For more advanced material engineering, what about using a nonmetallic, transparent material? E.g. a suitable glass-ceramics with high enough thermal conductivity?

Cast iron has 55 W/m.K; transparent materials like glass trail far behind. Pure silica has about 1-1.4. The Macor machinable glass-ceramics is in the same ballpark. The Perlucor transparent ceramics goes to 15. Impure diamond goes to 1000, pure to 2200, isotopically enriched to 41,000 with calculated maximum at 200,000 (wow). Sapphire (at 500’C) has 10.9, the Surmet brand of transparent ALON has 12.3 at room temp and drops to 6.9 at 500’C.

Essentially, the transparent material would have to be crystalline; amorphous ones like glasses and glass-ceramics have woefully low thermal conductivity. Ideal would be diamond; I quite hope that high-speed diamond growth techniques will evolve fast enough to make diamond waffle irons practical and affordable during my lifetime.

To keep the cost affordable, the best solution would likely be to cheat, keep the thing made from metal, and just drill a matrix of holes as viewports, and plug them with transparent materials; perhaps borosilicate glass, perhaps sapphire. The metal around can act as a compression seal.

Is there ever enough whimsy in one’s life? Go for it.

This?

Also a death metal version here.

There are too many to choose from. And people are ingrate.

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I’ve backed 31 projects, and only 1 has crapped out. Not sure what the overall odds are, but I’m not worried about him not delivering, personally. I got the crepe pan in cast iron a while back. This looks pretty sweet; my only concern is that I won’t actually make enough waffles to make it worthwhile to own. Hmmm, cool looking tho.

You can make churros… Make Churros in Your Waffle Iron and Skip the Deep Frying

Ceramic would be nice but it’s not very transparent. Glass while also brittle is stiffer but is thermodynamically sensitive. It will expand in the heat - a metal holding fixture would fracture it. Pyrex is a little better in that department and Zerodur (glass/ceramic hybrid) even more so. Fused silica (very little lead, arsenic, boron, etc) would be sweet but, like Z., is in the same price league) The drawback is that glass has to be milled by a CNC process and unfortunately it’s difficult to polish all those complex surfaces. Nigh on impossible, really, being as hard as it is. If you can’t polish it you can’t very well clean it much less make out the unfolding beauty of the pre-nascent waffle.

Save that big chunk of Pyrex (or fs or Z) for a home-made telescope mirror (a simple sphere surface w/ a hint of parabola). Conventionally made waffles after a night of stargazing are still perfectly awesome.

You just need transparent aluminum. Like in Star Trek.

Coincidentally i did a google search for that term and hit upon an old article detailing an aluminum compound that i hadn’t heard of before that is transparent.

The oxynitrides, AlON and SiAlON. Good choice.

Also,

Yeah, just cast iron. Anyone can make that. Just working with a 1200C liquid so dense that rocks will float on it. Grinding off sprue and flash. Making the handles and attaching them. Packaging. Shipping. NOTHING HARD AT ALL.

It’s easy compared to countless failed hardware kickstarters. So yes. Plus he’s not in a shed smithing waffle irons.

I believe at least the casting will be subcontracted. It’s not a rocket surgery anyway, metal casting is a fairly ancient technology. As of spruce and flash grinding, there are few things more trivial than that. And cast iron grinds quite well.

Aren’t the keys supposed to stick out?

If you want the keys to stick, pour caramel over them. Nnnnnooommmmmmmmm!

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