A Display Made Out of Pasta?

Consider the humble penne pasta noodle. Short, fat, and hollow, with ridges along its outer circumference. Personally, I would argue that they should be low on the pasta consumption hierarchy. If, however, you’re looking to implement pasta as a structural element, these properties actually make it pretty a “tasty” option. Julius Curt (AKA Julius Makes) noticed that penne noodles look similar to gears, which took him on rather strange journey where he made his own pasta-based display.

His original idea was to use penne pasta as actual gears, choosing a brand of noodles that seemed relatively dimensionally consistent to transmit power from one cylinder to another. Even after several attempts at this feat, results were quite poor, as even these noodles have a rather high dimensional variation. He then moved on to larger cannelloni pasta, and subbed in a 3D-printed frame and gear assembly for support and power transmission.

With these mechanical kinks worked out, the device spins a series of 8 cannelloni rollers into three different positions, together displaying up to three painted-on images. The follower assembly is powered by a 29BYJ-48 stepper motor, along with a ULD2003 driver.

A Wemos D1 Mini ESP8266 board provides control, and advances through each image sequentially with button pushes. However, given the ESP board's Wi-Fi capabilities, who knows what’s in store for this not-quite-food display? Check out the video below for more info on the build, including JM’s trials while getting the pasta rollers painted correctly.