From Candy Fab to Sugar Lab

In 2006, Windell Oskay and Lenore Edman attended a Maker Faire where they saw demonstrations of 3d printers. At the time there were only a few commercially available printers and the price of them was around $20,000. There were also a few 3d printer kits for people who wanted to build their own but even those were priced in the $1000-3000 range. Oskay and Edman decided to try their hand at building their own printer and thus the Candy Fab 4000 was born. They built a powder bed fusion printer. This type of machine uses lasers to melt a powdered material into a specific pattern which becomes an object when it solidifies. For fun, they decided to use it to melt sugar and make candy.

After the next several years they developed various iterations of the Candy Fab until 2009 when they decided to give up on the project. For a time they had made their design publicly available for a some other enterprising do-it-yourselfer to try. Eventually a group of technologists and chefs picked up on their idea and formed The Sugar Lab.

The Sugar Lab now makes an industrial machine that can print their candy creations. They offer a seasonal collection of candies for sale and in addition, they will design and make custom items for larger events. I have tried a couple of their items. One was a set of bon bons that they call strawberry covered chocolates. They are ginger flavored chocolate ganache centers covered in a crisp sugar shell made to look like pastel-colored strawberries. Another item I have tried is their zombie brain garnish. This item is a set of sugar zombie heads, They have an indentation at the top of the skull where you can put a raspberry or blackberry to look like brains. You can put the garnish on the side of a glass. When you drop it into the drink it dissolves into a bright colored edible glitter-studded lime flavor for your drink. They would be a fun addition to a Halloween party. The picture on this page shows a drink I made with red hibiscus simple syrup and black raspberry sparking water. Using 3d printing the Sugar Lab has developed some truly stunning creations.