World’s top pasta seller wants restaurants to 3D print your food

Barilla, the world’s largest producer of pasta, has been working with TNO Eindhoven to design the perfect pasta printer for use in restaurants around the world. Having these machines will restaurants to produce past quickly and cheaply on their own. If you’re wondering why a Barilla would sell a tool that renders the company obsolete, it’s because it hopes to sell the pasta cartridges that are required to fuel the 3D printer. 

3D printing is attractive to a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons, but in general its supporters talk about the economic and efficiency benefits; it can build things faster and easier than competing methods, bring down manufacturing costs and remove the need for large amounts of international shipping. That’s usually what you hear in defense of 3D printing — but now, Italian food corporation Barilla is looking to 3D print their art.