Making breakfast has amazing potential to be a fun, inclusive, and rewarding experience for people of all demographics. However, many individuals are dissuaded and unenthused about taking on elaborate cooking projects in the morning due to the time, monotony, and complexity required. This lack of intrigue causes many to simply abandon the prospect of preparing breakfast which forces them to start the day on an empty stomach, void of the vital nutrients that are necessary to a healthy and productive lifestyle. Therefore, there is vast potential for a solution that adds a new found spark of creativity and innovation to the breakfast making process while also providing the ease and simplicity of automation, made possible by the rise of affordable technology and hardware. We are proposing a system that would automate the pancake making process by allowing users to create fun and stimulating multi-colored flapjacks in various shapes and designs. This product would give the user the choice to either print a pancake from a wide selection of preloaded designs, to create their own images to load into the product to be printed right before their eyes, or to control the product with a video-game style controller.

Voted Best Overall Prototype in the Spring 2017 Senior Mechanical Engineering Expo, the Multi-Color Pancake Printer was capable of printing pancakes in four colors. Users were able to print pancakes using the pre-loaded G-Code based designs or were able to draw their own 2D shapes using a SNES controller. The Multi-Color Pancake Printer was design to be used over most standard electric griddles. Additionally, the printer was designed to be easy to take apart and assemble for ease of storage and cleaning.