[00:00:00]
Intro Voiceover: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed podcast. For hundreds of ideas, free experiments, and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. And now, here’s your host, Ben Newsome.

[00:00:18]
Ben Newsome: G’day, welcome again for another Fizzics Ed podcast. Glad to have you, no matter where you are around this world of ours. We are talking STEM, and today we are talking with someone who truly understands the Maker Movement, was there from almost the very beginning with an amazing idea, the PancakeBot. Seriously, PancakeBot! A 3D printer that prints pancakes to get kids into technology, robotics, and food manufacturing.

[00:00:44]
Ben Newsome: And let’s be honest, who wouldn’t love to print pancakes in their school? Today we’re hanging out with the creator, Miguel Valenzuela, who really loves his STEM. By the way, he got this programme, this project, in front of the White House. Seriously, he was in the White House to show the Obama administration. How cool is that? All the way through to showing his kids just how you can make STEM truly sing with some unusual materials. This is a fun chat, and maybe have a think about how you might be able to do something like this in your school. Let’s go find out.

[00:01:11]
Intro Voiceover: This is the Fizzics Ed podcast, for all about science, edtech, and more. To see 100 fun, free experiments you can do with your class, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F-I-double-Z-I-C-S and click “100 Free Experiments.”

[00:01:29]
Miguel Valenzuela: Thank you for having me, Ben. How are you?

[00:01:32]
Ben Newsome: I’m doing well. It’s 7:00 p.m. on a Thursday for me. It is not for you in any way, shape, or form.

[00:01:40]
Miguel Valenzuela: It’s 9:00 o’clock in the morning here in Norway.

[00:01:42]
Ben Newsome: It is. You’ve got to love this virtual web conferencing thing. We did hang out a couple of years ago now on Clubhouse, that got a lot of educators very excited for a little slice of time. It’s been ages since I’ve spoken to you, but I remember very clearly what you were doing. Some people haven’t met you and don’t know what you get up to. Let us know a bit of what you do.

[00:02:08]
Miguel Valenzuela: My name is Miguel Valenzuela, and I am the inventor of PancakeBot, the world’s first pancake printer. PancakeBot started off as a LEGO creation that was inspired by my daughter. We used the Maker Movement to showcase it throughout the world. In 2014, we created an acrylic version that skyrocketed our popularity to get us to the White House Maker Faire with President Obama, which was the most surreal event and result of a LEGO project.

[00:02:51]
Miguel Valenzuela: In 2015, through a licensee, we raised about $466,000 on Kickstarter to bring the PancakeBot to market. We’ve sold, through the licensee, about 7,000 units. Just in 2021, I reacquired, as the inventor, the intellectual property. We have some remaining inventory.

[00:03:16]
Miguel Valenzuela: Now we’ve repurposed some of these units to serve as education packages, because we found out that a lot of these so-called consumer variants that were meant for the consumer kitchen ended up in schools because it’s a simple little CNC with a custom patented pneumatic system. It’s very fun and easy to learn. We’re using Marlin firmware and you can go in there and do your own G-code with a text file. That’s the story of PancakeBot in a nutshell.

[00:03:53]
Miguel Valenzuela: I am a registered professional engineer in California living in Norway with a degree from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in bioresource and ag engineering, which is where I have that combination of technology and food. I live in Norway with my wife and three daughters.

[00:04:16]
Miguel Valenzuela: Now we are looking to see what’s next for PancakeBot and trying to put the remaining units with content in education. So far, we’ve had a lot of successful feedback from educators and we’re really excited about that. Hopefully, we can use the revenue from that to build up the next variant of PancakeBot.

[00:04:40]
Ben Newsome: What I love about this thing is if you’re listening in, you’re probably thinking pancakes are round, they come out rather flat, and you get to eat them, which is great. But if you troll the website just for a moment, there are a couple of things you can do with this particular bot which is unheard of that the kids get to play with.

[00:05:03]
Miguel Valenzuela: Right, Ben. I failed to mention, it really makes pancake art. There are a lot of pancake artists out there that do the art by hand. The principles of pancake art are very basic. You get a skillet, warm it up, and draw a line with essentially a ketchup bottle. You wait, and then you come in and fill a little bit more. Then you wait again, fill a little bit more, and you might adjust the temperature.

[00:05:41]
Miguel Valenzuela: The waiting periods and changes in temperature alter the browning or what my kids are annoyed at as the Maillard reaction. She’s like, “Don’t mention Maillard reaction in the house anymore!” The Maillard reaction is the browning of the starches within foods, and above a certain point you have caramelisation, which gives it that real dark brown, nutty flavour. By changing the temperature of a griddle, you can use the same material, and get three or four different colours. That allows us, with the PancakeBot, to draw precise pieces of art.

[00:06:21]
Miguel Valenzuela: What’s interesting about the PancakeBot is we have a special bottle on there, and that’s what we received a patent on. As an engineer I wanted to see if we could get a patent on it, but I like to allow people to do something with it if they want to. The main thing is that it uses a pneumatic way of dispensing fluids. Then all of a sudden, it’s not just pancake batter, it’s ketchup, it’s mustard, it’s other materials that have the same viscosity.

[00:06:58]
Miguel Valenzuela: In 2019, we were in Egypt with the MIT Fab Foundation. They were putting together an event there, and we were pouring sand out of the PancakeBot. It was refined sand that we mixed with hot water and cornstarch, and we were making these little figures out of sand. Anything you can squeeze through a tube, you can typically run through the PancakeBot pneumatic system, and our system controls it instantly. There’s a little section we call “Beyond Pancakes” with PancakeBot.

[00:07:38]
Miguel Valenzuela: The fact that you don’t need to buy filament and if you just want to teach kids the principles of G-code, the principles of X-Y coordinates and essentially, pen up, pen down with Turtle, it’s definitely a way to inspire and teach kids the essentials of manufacturing and 3D printing.

[00:08:05]
Ben Newsome: There’s so much to unpack in what you just said. You can go from food technology through to mathematics, through to engineering principles and design, and just making stuff up on the fly. And there’s art there too! I’m curious, because you’ve seen this deployed in a number of schools, is it the food technologists who are using it more? Is it the science people? Is it the people that have to teach 3D printing and want to do something a little different? How are the schools using this in the classroom?

[00:08:40]
Miguel Valenzuela: There’s a wide variety of teachers out there using PancakeBot for different things. The main thing obviously is pancakes. They make their own pancake batter. We recommend Martha Stewart’s basic pancake recipe with a little bit more milk. It’s a really nice recipe. The main thing is that Martha Stewart uses oil rather than butter.

[00:09:12]
Ben Newsome: I’ve got to ask you now because you actually know this sort of stuff. When we go to the States, there’s this Aunt Jemima red packet.

[00:09:23]
Miguel Valenzuela: Right. There’s a lot of instant pancake batter out there. In the United States, you have Krusteaz. We were making it originally out of Martha Stewart’s basic pancake recipe. It’s a very simple recipe, and it has the right level of sugar to give you that browning. We find that a lot of teachers start using it for just that, making pancakes, exciting the kids about pancake art, and getting them excited about STEM.

[00:09:59]
Miguel Valenzuela: When we first displayed the LEGO version at the New York Maker Faire in 2012, as a child of the Maker Movement, we were making regular what we call in the States “silver dollar pancakes.” It’s about the size of an inch and a half, two inches, and it was just a drop. Essentially, it’s on/off, keep pumping the batter, then move on to the next one.

[00:10:25]
Miguel Valenzuela: Kids were waiting 20 minutes to see this little machine and it was like, “Wow, pancakes! LEGO! Robots! Oh my!” It was this perfect combination. Of course, the newer variant gets away from the LEGO version, but it still has that magic quality of the technology on there.

[00:10:48]
Miguel Valenzuela: Teachers have been using it for a wide variety of things to introduce and get kids excited with technology. They can go ahead and make their mixtures and pancakes. We’ve had schools that actually run pancake robot breakfasts, and they raise money for their robot clubs. We actually put together an entrepreneurial package that helps teachers and schools learn more about that. How do you serve 300 people with one PancakeBot? Well, there’s prep work and planning in advance.

[00:11:27]
Miguel Valenzuela: From the perspective of 3D printers, you can get yourself a small 3D printer and start pumping things out, but PancakeBot has this unique quality of creating food that is consumable. You can make some pretty good money off of this for your club or organisation. We had one school in Florida make $2,700 over the weekend with their PancakeBot. They made all the pancakes in advance.

[00:11:57]
Miguel Valenzuela: I think there was something on Twitter that I saw recently where somebody says, “I never made money off of 3D printing.” But people have made money using PancakeBot to make these pancake breakfasts, to create an experience. That’s what a lot of these things are about, you pick up your pancake and have an experience of seeing it being done.

[00:12:15]
Ben Newsome: I love that you got the entrepreneurial side, because as a science educator who also runs a business and a non-profit, I very much understand what you’ve got to do to get things going. 3D printing is what you make of it. It’s a creation machine. I’ve got a really good friend of mine that runs quite a successful small company, Splat, and they’re these little flat 2D shapes. They use them for design so kids can do isometric drawings using this template.

[00:12:45]
Ben Newsome: That was originally sparked out of using a 3D printer from a local electronics store. And that is successful. So the people that say it hasn’t been successful for me, that’s just the first iteration of a failure that might be success later. In this case, you were a roaring success. It got thrown through to Obama at one point. Gosh, that’s quite a rocket ride from the New York Maker Faire.

[00:13:19]
Miguel Valenzuela: I know, it’s very crazy. It’s very surreal because I owe it to my daughter. We have a TEDx talk on this where we tell the story. I was reading Make Magazine Volume 2 and it was an article by Bob Parks. I think it was Prototyping with LEGO. A guy named Adrian Marshall from the UK had made a pancake stamping machine using LEGO and other electronics.

[00:14:00]
Miguel Valenzuela: He had used it as a prototyping tool to show the customer what their machine was going to look like. I think they wanted to stamp a Rugrats logo on a pancake. He used that, and then my daughter asked what I was doing. I said I was reading about a guy that made a pancake stamping machine out of LEGO. She turned to her sister and said, “Dad’s going to make a pancake machine out of LEGO.”

[00:14:26]
Miguel Valenzuela: I could either say, “That’s cute, let’s go play in the snow,” or I said, “Why not?” I think part of it was to prove to myself that I could do something crazy like this. It was all made out of LEGO using the pneumatic system, except for the ketchup bottle. That went viral in 2011 after six months of trying to figure out how to control X, Y, and positive and negative flow with three motors, because the LEGO NXT at the time only had three motors.

[00:15:06]
Miguel Valenzuela: There was a LEGO NXT book that showed how to draw with an Etch A Sketch by controlling two XY axes. I said I’ll add another motor and see what happens. Not being a developer or a programmer, I always had trouble with data. I had books where I drew out the coordinates by hand and entered those into a spreadsheet, which would convert those numbers into degrees. Then I would copy that into a text file and the LEGO one would read the text file and spit it out.

[00:15:48]
Miguel Valenzuela: The Museum of Modern Art in Atlanta actually made a copy of that one, so they put it on display there along with the latest version. It’s had an incredible effect, all sparked by my daughter’s statement and a stubborn dad that wanted to see something done and 20 litres of pancake batter.

[00:16:30]
Miguel Valenzuela: So yeah, it’s had an incredible effect…

[00:16:45]
Ben Newsome: But you got there. That’s what I love about this, and it’s not just a story, it’s a thing people can use and iterate to their heart’s content. Because isn’t that the point of the whole Maker Movement, what you’ve got in front of you and what can you do with it? What I love about this is it really helps, there’s a narrative in amongst the other teaching. You might be teaching various reactions with your sugars, or mathematics, and check out the geometric patterns created on PancakeBot’s website. Seriously, it’s mind-blowing that this is pancake batter.

[00:17:20]
Ben Newsome: We can teach the content, but for a lot of teachers listening, there’s the story, the history, and the thought process that goes behind the content. That is the deeper learning. There’s an opportunity for kids to see that these are two things that never the twain should meet. And yet, they very much did, and it’s neat because it works.

[00:17:45]
Miguel Valenzuela: I talked to people at LEGO and they said, “We don’t do food and LEGO.” Okay, I got it. I think they thought they had bromine or some chemical in the LEGO that you don’t want to chew on. I said I’ll figure something else out. I did meet the vice president of LEGO at the time, and we were hoping we could do something with LEGO.

[00:18:10]
Miguel Valenzuela: There’s a lot of people out there that do great stuff with LEGO, so I can understand that. But the uniqueness of combining this thing was interesting. The story and why we did a TEDx talk is because there are some points in there like you said.

[00:18:31]
Miguel Valenzuela: Number one, it’s ideas. A lot of kids have ideas and you really need somebody to help you get to that next point. You’ll see that if a kid is constantly met with challenges they end up giving up over time because it just leads to frustration.

[00:18:55]
Miguel Valenzuela: They need an adult or a mentor, somebody that can say, “It’s a crazy idea, but let’s see if we can execute on it. Let’s try it out, you never know what’s going to happen.”

[00:19:18]
Miguel Valenzuela: The second thing is the idea of prototyping with LEGO. Bob Parks had written about that. I think the funny thing was that people would laugh every time they saw it. The first few years that we were running around with this LEGO version, I never glued the thing. I would always travel with it on the carry-on and assemble it the night before the New York Maker Faire, trying to figure out the instructions and make everything work.

[00:19:50]
Miguel Valenzuela: LEGO was funny. It wasn’t really until we did the acrylic version and put an Arduino in there, thanks to Adafruit and Adafruit’s motor shields, that we were actually able to get people to say, “Maybe this is something real because it’s not made out of LEGO.” That’s when people really took us seriously.

[00:20:13]
Miguel Valenzuela: It’s like The Little Prince, The Little Prince was quoted about the asteroid that he lived on. Originally the Turkish astronomer that supposedly discovered this asteroid, nobody took him seriously because he was dressed in traditional Turkish clothes. But when he came back the next year dressed in a European suit, everybody took him seriously. It’s how adults perceive certain things. That should get kids to understand, and teachers also, that they shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth and really see what the possibility is here.

[00:20:56]
Miguel Valenzuela: The other thing is that it goes to show you the power of the Maker Movement and having a good community to support you. When we started figuring out what we were going to do with Kickstarter, I found out that people were asking Kickstarter, “When’s PancakeBot going to come online?” It’s good to have a good community and a grassroots movement before you do any type of crowdfunding. People think they stick something out there and it’ll go viral. No, build up your base first and those people will support you.

[00:21:36]
Miguel Valenzuela: Part of our thing working with educators now is finalising the PancakeBot Adventures. You were talking about food and art, so we’ve come up with something we call FEAST: Food Engineering, Art, Science, and Technology squared. It’s just a little joke, but the idea is that we have a series of comics that tells the adventures of PancakeBot.

[00:22:05]
Miguel Valenzuela: The artist doing that is Diana Letto. She’s based out of Los Angeles and she’s done things for My Little Pony. Some of the core storylines were developed by Evan Bergone. He’s also worked a lot with Tapigami, making tape figures.

[00:22:42]
Miguel Valenzuela: We’re trying to refine the content because from a teacher perspective, I’m thinking as an engineer, “You have to learn G-code, you have to learn programming.” A teacher says, “We asked the kids to make a geometric figure with the PancakeBot and stand in front of the classroom and talk about why they like triangles.” I never would have thought of that!

[00:23:10]
Miguel Valenzuela: This is where teachers are the masters of creating associations and connections. It’s not just about learning the tech. It’s the storytelling quality that engages kids. So it’s not about the PancakeBot printing a pancake, it’s about the student telling that story. Why did they choose to make a Brontosaurus instead of a T-Rex? Why did they choose a square versus a decahedron?

[00:23:43]
Miguel Valenzuela: How do you put that into a curriculum? You really can’t. You set up an activity and let the kids refine their storytelling qualities. They can refine how they approach something and figure out how to approach problem-solving. It’s not something you can literally give instructions to, but you can give them activity ideas. I think that’s where a lot of curricula fail; we’re trying to teach too much and guide them, whereas here, just create. Here’s your activity and let’s see what you can extrapolate from that.

[00:24:28]
Miguel Valenzuela: We’re also working hopefully with Nancy Otero. She’s an alumni of Stanford to help us further develop some of these things for the different levels. PancakeBot can fit in elementary school, middle school, collegiate, high school. It just depends on what activities you want to be involved in.

[00:24:51]
Ben Newsome: Which almost comes full circle to how it was developed in the first place, which was LEGO blocks. LEGO blocks are iterative, you can get a bucket of them, move them around in lots of different ways and all of a sudden you’ve got yourself some sort of thing you never built before and may not ever get built again, but it certainly stands. The idea is that they’re building blocks, in this case PancakeBot can be exactly the same. I love this! Do you still go out to the Maker Faires where you can?

[00:25:29]
Miguel Valenzuela: Oh definitely. Whenever we can make it, we can. Typically we’ve taken a different approach now that we really want to go to a Maker Faire and feed people. Because we have a limited number of PancakeBots based from the initial manufacturing run that we’re repurposing for education, we’re not necessarily selling PancakeBots just to create a volume and get some revenue. We’re trying to create more of an experience around it. You buy the experience and you get a PancakeBot.

[00:26:07]
Miguel Valenzuela: When we go to a Maker Faire, what we want to do is create what we call a PancakeBot Pavilion. It can be a 10×10 or a 20×20 area and we have six PancakeBots there with five computers, and then we have different stations. This station you draw your own pancake and over here you just get a pancake and print it out. We’re really just feeding people to get them to see what’s there.

[00:26:45]
Miguel Valenzuela: That requires us to get a sponsor to cover those expenses. Before Atmel was bought by Microchip, Atmel sponsored the biggest PancakeBot Pavilion in 2016 at the Maker Faire there. It was a success. Crowds of kids around and we’re giving them away under the health limit, and they’re walking away with a little pancake but they get to see their pancake being made and they get to interact with that.

[00:27:23]
Miguel Valenzuela: And the girls also speak at Maker Faires too. They’re a little older now so they’re getting into their teenage years, but they still go out there and they’re available to talk about what it was like being the PancakeBot kids and why it’s important for making.

[00:27:42]
Ben Newsome: Did you get to feed the Obamas the pancakes?

[00:27:47]
Miguel Valenzuela: We didn’t actually. President Obama was there. The way the Maker Faire was set up was that we were on the first floor of the White House right next to the Rose Garden. You get to meet President Obama in the bigger conference room, the Eisenhower Room.

[00:28:10]
Miguel Valenzuela: In that room it’s just golden curtains, a press room where he would do all of his talks. Behind you there are 30 cameras from every station in the world, and you’re sitting right there in the audience.

[00:28:34]
Miguel Valenzuela: His schedule is always unknown except to his close people, and they already knew what they were going around. We got ushered up into the room. Apparently from what he said, he thought it was really cool to see the pancake of President Obama that we had made.

[00:29:00]
Miguel Valenzuela: What was funny about this is that they didn’t have any food for us because I think they were unsure what was happening. All these kids are running around and I’m feeding them with the PancakeBot, giving out White House pancakes and Obama pancakes so people could eat.

[00:29:20]
Miguel Valenzuela: We were next to the Rose Garden because the gentleman in charge of the White House asked if I was going to burn his White House down. I said no. It’s a greaseless griddle, it doesn’t produce smoke. He said, “If anything happens, this Secret Service agent is going to throw you out into the Rose Garden.” The whole White House smelled like pancakes.

[00:29:52]
Ben Newsome: So you left your mark there for a little while, at least by scent. That’s cool!

[00:29:53]
Miguel Valenzuela: Yeah, and I don’t know if you’ve read the story about the Obama slippers?

[00:30:00]
Ben Newsome: No, I haven’t heard about that.

[00:30:01]
Miguel Valenzuela: You have to interview Jens Dyvik, he’s a Norwegian maker over here. Jens started a Fab Lab over here in Oslo. He had went down to Kenya, and a Japanese artist had created these slippers that you could cut out with a laser cutter. They wanted him to meet Obama’s grandmother. He thought he’d make a present for her, and he made these slippers with an image of President Obama’s “Hope” picture. They took a picture of him with President Obama’s grandmother and she’s holding the slippers.

[00:30:45]
Miguel Valenzuela: I talked to Jens and said, “You won’t believe it, we got invited to the White House.” He told me about the slippers and said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if we made slippers for President Obama with a picture of his grandmother holding his slippers?”

[00:31:10]
Miguel Valenzuela: He said it in passing and I said, “Go for it. What’s the worst that can happen?” I had never met Jens physically, we just talked on the phone, but I had cut the PancakeBot out at a laser cutter in Oslo at the Fab Lab.

[00:31:39]
Miguel Valenzuela: The day before we jumped on the airplane to go down to Washington DC, he brings this little box. The box has the slippers and I looked inside to make sure everything was good. He sent an email to the team from the Fab Foundation. I’m setting up at the White House and I texted, “They said they hear you have the slippers.” I said, “Yeah, just follow the pancake smell.”

[00:32:10]
Miguel Valenzuela: Neil Gershenfeld from the Fab Foundation went over there and was flanked by Secret Service agents. I gave him this handoff of these slippers that President Obama ended up accepting into the archives as a gift, which you never give a dignitary, it’s not custom to do that.

[00:32:35]
Miguel Valenzuela: Make Magazine wrote a little article on that. It’s another magical story of the Maker Movement and the quirkiness of it, and how PancakeBot and really saying yes to the moment can lead to something fun and engaging, a story that you can pass on to your kids. A lot of times it’s about saying yes to things.

[00:33:04]
Ben Newsome: That’s perfect! And actually, I was going to ask, if you had a bunch of teachers in front of you who wanted to create many versions of you, what would be some advice if you were getting teachers to impart some knowledge about how to handle saying yes to things, how to handle prototyping, how to handle that weird rough road where you don’t quite know where you’re going but you’ve got a vague idea it’s kind of cool.

[00:33:36]
Miguel Valenzuela: It’s a really good question and I have some personal experience from being one of those kids that’s always coming up with ideas. A couple of years ago I worked at a middle school here as a maker teacher taking over for my wife who went back to get a new degree for teaching. Depending on the kid, the child may have learning challenges or may just be a normal kid with ideas, every person is looking for validation. We want to be listened to. We want to be acknowledged.

[00:34:18]
Miguel Valenzuela: For me, I had a lot of ideas when I was a kid and I didn’t have a vehicle to launch those ideas. The worst thing you could do to somebody is say, “That’s cute,” and move on and show them that you don’t take it seriously. Some stuff is obviously not going to work. But if you validate and acknowledge that, especially in a classroom environment when you have students saying, “What about this? What about that?”

[00:34:50]
Miguel Valenzuela: “Hey, Ben, great idea. But right now it’s not the time. But what we’re going to do is write that idea down on this sticky note. We’re going to post it on our idea board, which is on the wall right here, and every Wednesday at 11:00 o’clock, we’re going to come back and review those ideas.”

[00:35:16]
Miguel Valenzuela: Now what you’ve done is a couple of things. You’ve given validation to the student that what they’re saying is important. You’ve allowed them to get it off their chest and by putting it up on the wall, there is some importance there and you’ve allowed them to move on. Because now they can forget about it.

[00:35:45]
Miguel Valenzuela: There are books like Getting Things Done, the idea is to get everything out of your head. A reporter was supposedly talking to Einstein and asked him for a phone number, and he pulled it out of a book. He said, “Why am I going to remember this?” Let your head be clear of those things.

[00:36:08]
Miguel Valenzuela: When you’re in a classroom with kids, whether you’re doing PancakeBot or art, a student says, “I’ve got a hypothesis that the dinosaurs really did XYZ.” You reply, “Great. Let’s write that down and we’ll come back and review it.” Now it’s captured, you’ve given them acknowledgment, and the ability to move on.

[00:36:35]
Miguel Valenzuela: If you ignore it and just brush it off, they keep going in their head and don’t move on. I think that’s one of the ways teachers can handle that; have a massive idea board, give those kids credit, and once a week review those things. They might forget about it by then, but it might be something that can change the world.

[00:37:08]
Ben Newsome: Exactly, and that makes me think about just how many ideas are sitting in the back of kids’ minds that don’t get onto that wall. That’s quite powerful to keep that in the back of our head to actually put it in the front of our minds and out on the wall. I agree, that’s fantastic. I want to say thank you for popping on for this, especially in a beginning of a busy morning for you. There’d be people listening in who would love to know where on earth do I find out more about this thing we’ve been talking about. Where do they go?

[00:37:41]
Miguel Valenzuela: Thank you for letting me be on here. I know we’ve been talking about connecting for quite some time. I’d like to come back sometime to talk about other things too, everything from innovation to my journey with patents. If people are interested in a PancakeBot, they can go to pancakebot.com.

[00:38:05]
Miguel Valenzuela: We have a limited number of units we call the PancakeBot 2.0 variant package. It’s $459, and it comes with the PancakeBot and an hour of training from me. We have a deal right now called “PANCAKE100X” where you get $200 off that package, but it doesn’t come with the training. We’re here to help you out as long as you reach out to us.

[00:38:27]
Miguel Valenzuela: That’s available in the United States right now. The biggest challenge is internationally our griddle is 110 volts, so with the 220 volt issues in Europe, we don’t have that right now. We want to use the remaining inventory and push those out with these packages to build up a financial runway so that way we can launch our next stuff.

[00:39:08]
Miguel Valenzuela: We are looking for investors that would like to invest in something that’s already proven. We have market validation. We have a product. We have a brand, a registered trademark and a patent. We’re 90% above where a lot of startups typically are going into an exit. What we want to do is find somebody that really believes in the quirkiness of this, wants to support us, and get in there and help us be the fathers of 3D food printing in the world.

[00:39:48]
Miguel Valenzuela: Columbia just put out a new machine where they’re using lasers to create a 3D cheesecake. I know some students from Columbia have some PancakeBots there, and there have been some other machines out there that have been inspired by what we do. That’s my mission, inspiring and doing something amazing.

[00:40:16]
Ben Newsome: I’ve seen the 24-hour pizzeria that’s done with 3D printed pizzas as well. It’s a thing! If we look forward, we’ve been lately doing a lot of work in the space industry education space. 3D printing can be used in lots of ways, perhaps this might be a way that food could be produced, who knows?

[00:40:38]
Miguel Valenzuela: It’s funny that you mention that because we were just talking to the NASA Flight Opportunities Office about working in conjunction with the STEM grant that they’re putting out there to see if we can get PancakeBot on the zero-G plane. Can we test out our pneumatic system? What is the binding like when it comes to being able to bind to our heated surface? What does this look like? We want some supporters and backers to come in and say, “Let’s get on this.” We’re making it right now, just breaking even, but if we had some runway, that would allow us to really push forward with all the fun and ideas that we had. We just want to find the right people.

[00:41:22]
Ben Newsome: And also too, if you’re listening into this and you actually know or you’re one of the teachers who already have one of these things, maybe reach out to Miguel too as well, because this could actually be an interesting testing ground and ideation space for new ideas around how this thing could be used in different ways. Nothing like a collegiate mindset, I think there’s a lot of things that can happen with that sort of brain space. But look, thank you again for hanging out with us. I’d love to know where this goes. I’d love to know, yeah, what work will you do with NASA? Who knows? And it all started with an idea with your kids, which I love. It’s fantastic. Thank you very much for your time.

[00:41:55]
Miguel Valenzuela: Yeah, and thank you again. All right.

[00:42:00]
Announcer: We hope you’ve been enjoying the Fizzics Ed podcast. We love making science make sense. Why don’t you book us for a science show or workshop in your school? If you’re outside of Australia, you can connect with us via a virtual excursion. See our website for more.

[00:42:17]
Ben Newsome: Well, I love that chat with Miguel. How cool is it that you can start off with something simple with your kids, design it, put it in front of the people, and suddenly they love it? And all of a sudden you get propelled all the way through to the White House. What an amazing story. I want you to go check out his website. Check out pancakebot.com and check out all the mathematical spirals, the tessellated swan pancakes—that’s seriously a thing—and all the different ways that you can use pancakes to teach science.

[00:42:47]
Ben Newsome: What an amazing idea. And who would have thought, hey? I love real innovation and this is genuinely what we’re looking at here. So that is enough of this particular podcast. We have more episodes as usual coming up and I hope you’ve been loving hanging out and listening to all the different people who come on this programme. You’ve been listening to me, Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education. This is the Fizzics Ed podcast, and I hope to catch you another time.

[00:43:05]
Voiceover: You’ve been listening to another Fizzics Ed podcast. We’re excited about science. Subscribe to us on iTunes to download the next episode as soon as it’s released. And don’t forget, for hundreds of ideas, free experiments, our new “Be Amazing” book and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F-I-double-Z-I-C-S and click “100 Free Experiments.”

[00:43:34]
Announcer: This podcast is part of the Australian Educators Online Network. AEON.net.au.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a PancakeBot and how does it work?

PancakeBot is the world’s first pancake printer, designed to create intricate pancake art. It functions as a simple CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machine using a patented pneumatic dispensing system. Users create designs that are converted into G-code, which the bot then follows to dispense batter onto a heated griddle to create browning through the Maillard reaction.

How does PancakeBot integrate into the school curriculum?

It covers a broad range of subjects, including mathematics (X-Y coordinates and geometry), food technology (chemistry of cooking), and engineering (robotics and G-code programming). It is also used for entrepreneurial projects where students run pancake breakfasts to raise funds for school clubs, teaching them business planning and logistics.

Can the PancakeBot dispense materials other than pancake batter?

Yes, the pneumatic system allows for various fluids with similar viscosities to be used. Miguel has successfully experimented with ketchup, mustard, and even a mixture of refined sand, water, and cornstarch to create artistic figures in a “Beyond Pancakes” context.

Where did the idea for the PancakeBot come from?

The project began as a LEGO creation inspired by Miguel’s three-year-old daughter. After reading an article about a pancake stamping machine, Miguel’s daughter challenged him to build one. He used LEGO NXT motors and pneumatics to create the first prototype, which eventually led to the professional acrylic version and a successful Kickstarter campaign.

What is the “FEAST” concept mentioned in the podcast?

FEAST stands for Food Engineering, Art, Science, and Technology squared. It is a curriculum framework developed by Miguel and his team to use pancake printing as a narrative-driven educational tool, combining technical skills with storytelling and creative expression.

Extra thought ideas to consider

The “Idea Board” for Classroom Management

Miguel suggests that teachers use a physical “idea board” with sticky notes to validate every student’s suggestion. By capturing ideas and reviewing them at a set time each week, educators acknowledge a child’s creativity and give them the validation they seek without derailing the current lesson, allowing the student to move on and remain focused.

Entrepreneurship through 3D Printing

While many schools struggle to find a commercial use for 3D printers, PancakeBot offers a direct path to fundraising. By teaching students how to scale a “pancake breakfast” event—calculating prep work, serving times, and costs—educators can teach real-world business skills through a high-engagement robotics project.

Discussion points summarised from the FizzicsEd Podcast, verified and edited by Ben Newsome CF