This project is currently in the research stage. Having been reading the books 'Zero to Maker' by David Lang (OpenROV) and 'The Toaster Project' by Thomas Thwaites I have realised what I need is a project with a goal to take me out of the Arduino blinky light and solder kit zone, in to real making/hacking. Lang suggests an 'Unknown Project' which as I understand it is one that has been unexplored or under-explored, and he also suggests that using a popular forum to log, share and discus ideas would help the process along. So my idea, is an open hardware food creating machine, that will produce a large array of food, from a limited array of ingredients (approx 50) that can be made easily, and a ingredient markup language. 3d food printers in current development are either impractical or unappealing to me. They range from candy makers, ones that still need to be hand finished and cooked or the one publicised for receiving NASA funding recently used dead bugs. They seem all to focus on the gimmick, and not the food, and I like food. The other approach is the barbots, which seem to mostly perform flawlessly, but are unable to produce food. So my approach is to work through the process logically and break it down to sub projects. Design meals by hand using the limited ingredients for proof of concept, choose the ingredients to provide the widest possible range of nutrients and transpose the recipies to psudocode that can be easilly transformed in to a markup language later. Design a process for mixing and cooking ingredients. I envision a system of different food processors, steamers, boilers etc. and a range of extruding dies. Design a self cleaning system. Possibly ultrasonic or ionic. To that end, here is my preliminary list of ingredients. sugar, salt, oil, water, co2,Alcohol 37.5%,pectin,bicarb,nutritional yeast coffee,tea,mint,cocoa,garlic,oregano,chilli powder, paprika rice,soya,corn,wheat lemon extract,orange extract,tomato powder,dried apple,dried carrots,dried peas,potato powder. These ingredients can be used to make among other things, sausages, burgers, curry's, pasta, fries, soups, cereals, 'cider', cocktails, deserts, sodas, sauces, egg cheese and milk substitutes. So that's my plan. What do you guy think, and what ingredients would you add and why? And what would you call it? There are loads of things I left out as everything will change as I work through the process. Thanks for reading, Haydn