Primer on 3D Printing; Interview with the inventors of 3D sugar printing; celebrity cake maker, Duff Goldman.

1. JANUARY 201458
Liz von Hasseln: We actually
met in high school [in Maine] and
have been kind of following each
other around ever since.
Liz and Kyle did indeed follow
each other through college and,
in 2006, the two started a Ph.D.
program in biology in Irvine,
California — Kyle in molecular ecol-
ogy and Liz in stem cell research
for breast cancer treatment. But
despite loving the learning and the
INNOVATORS LIZ AND
KYLE VON HASSELN
USE 3D SUGAR PRINTING
TO EMBRACE THE SWEET
SHAPE OF SUCCESS.
Playing
With
LOCATED BEHIND AN ANONY-
MOUS DOOR AND CALLBOX
IN AN OFFBEAT SECTION OF
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES,
WHERE MODEST,MIDDLE-CLASS,
TREELESS NEIGHBORHOODS ARE
DOTTED WITH VAGUELY MYSTERI-
OUS WAREHOUSES,IS THE SUGAR
LAB. Inside, founder-operators
Kyle and Liz von Hasseln are
busy democratizing technology,
creating food art and, quite liter-
ally, shaping the future of what
we eat. Part hipster loft-space,
part gallery, part laboratory, this
immaculate environment repre-
sents the carefully considered and
deceptively simple choices in both
their business philosophy and the
materials they use to create their
innovative confectionary art: pure
white sugar and water.
So how did these young, married,
microbiology Ph.D. candidate
dropouts become
3D sugar printing
entrepreneurs and
the directors of
food products for
3D Systems, one of
the world leaders
in what is commonly called “the
next trillion-dollar industry”? It’s
kind of a short story, really. But,
like theirSugar Lab concept, it’s a
deceptively simple one.
Our
Food
GEKP-140100-CAKES.indd 58 10/23/13 4:28 PM

2. research, after about a year they
decided that the career prospects
seemed full of less-interesting
bureaucracy and academia with a
slim chance of tenure at the same
institution.
Kyle von Hasseln:So we basi-
cally said, “Let’s take a year off
and see if we still want to do this.”
[Both laugh] We didn’t know
what we wanted to do, but it
became really clear that wasn’t it.
Kyle/Liz [in unison]: So that’s
when we moved to Portland.
[More laughs]
Liz: And we were bums for
about two years.
GEEK: That’s a big leap from
microbiology to bumdom to 3D
sugar printing.
Liz: It is a big leap. I had a
nebulous feeling that I wanted
to transition into something that
was more creative and more
design-based, and in Portland we
worked on a small project with
some of our friends who lived
there, converting older houses to
be more energy efficient. I looked
into it a bit and it seemed like a
good mixture to me of design and
slightly more analytical “sciency”
practices.
So they set their course in a
new direction, when they applied
and were accepted to SCI-Arc —
Southern California Institute of
Architecture — where they were
quickly introduced to 3D printing.
It’s common for architecture
schools to utilize 3D printing as a
way to generate design models,
but Liz notes that SCI-Arc puts
an uncommon emphasis on
“integrating emerging technologies
into how you design as tools.”The
duo integrated these 3D printing
tools so well into their design
work, in fact, that last year they
were awarded the inauguralGehry
Prize for their joint masters thesis
“Phantom Geometry,” a unique
3D printing method that allows
an element of real-time design
during printing that doesn’t rely on
flattening to a 2D model first. In
their words: “We are developing a
system of moving streaming infor-
mation through space in the form
of light to generate material form.”
One of their sculptures, essentially
“light” reified and printed in clear-
ish resin, hangs from the ceiling of
their live/work space inThe Sugar
Lab. It’s a sort of minimalist-yet-
Seussian staircase, narrow and
twirling about 7 feet in height from
the rafters, and is both as “sciency”
and whimsical as you’d expect
from these two. (Check it out at
vimeo.com/51233342.)
What year did you start at SCI-Arc?
Liz: That was 2009. It was like
a three-and-a-half year program.
So pretty early on we got really
interested in 3D printing and ways
to tinker and hack it.
Three-and-a-half years from 2009
means you graduated approxi-
mately yesterday.
Kyle: Absolutely. One year ago
we graduated and immediately
started hustling to try and figure
out how to get The Sugar Lab
open, if it was possible — and we
only had our first clients in May of
this year.
You two move quickly. At what point
in your studying architecture and
doing all this 3D printing did you
have this idea for The Sugar Lab?
Kyle: [At SCI-Arc] we became
really fascinated with rapid proto-
typing and 3D printing. We were
just using existing ColorJet printing
technology and thought really care-
fully about if it could be modified to
be food safe and kind of optimized
to make frosting.This same kind
of technology can be used to make
ceramic or plaster products. We just
wondered if you could do the same
thing with sugar.
What were some of your early
experiments?
Kyle: The impetus for the first
experiment was for my brother’s
girlfriend’s birthday.And we made
plans to bake her a cake.And the
day approached, and it dawned
on us — and this had happened a
bunch while we lived in this teeny
Echo Park [Calif.] apartment —
that we didn’t have an oven.
Liz: We’d always somehow
forget. We had a grill.
PHOTOSBYLIZVONHASSEIN,COURTESYOFTHESUGARLAB
! PRET A
MANGER:
This floral
cake top-
per was
designed by
using a CAD
sysem to
stretch and
squash the
hexagonal
base details.
59
GEKP-140100-CAKES.indd 59 10/23/13 4:28 PM

3. ! GIMMIE
SOME
SUGAR: Liz
Von Hasseln
eyes her
latest sugar
creations.
JANUARY 201460
Kyle: So we couldn’t make a
cake and we thought maybe we’ll
just 3D print something. Maybe we
could 3D print frosting for a cake
topper. And we just spent months
and months refining it until a
couple of months past her birthday
we produced this little cupcake
topper that was almost like a tiara
but with her name spelled out in
cursive. And we put it on a cupcake
and she just loved it.
Pure white sugar sculptures — it’s
such a clean, confident idea.
Kyle: It’s so simple. It took us
a long time to realize that maybe
a lot of reasons why food experi-
ments fail is because they saw it
as a novelty and thought, “How
can I 3D print a pizza?” which is
really complex. And maybe people
don’t want their pizza messed with
because it’s already great. What
you should do is choose something
that is really simple that people
will be willing to engage with.And
for us that’s just really clean, white
dessert sugar. If you can do that
really well it’ll open people up to
imagine how this can be a part
of how I interact when I celebrate
with food. If you do that, you can
build a market for it.
Had anyone printed sugar before?
Kyle: People had tried other
ways of 3D printing with sugar,
which included some really cool
experiments that were awesome.
One was squirting out molten
sugar, almost like caramel, in
extrusion-type printing, which is
a lot like MakerBot.And people
had tried something closer to
SLS [Selective Laser Sintering] so
they took a heated print head and
passed it over a sugar layer and
kind of caramelized it in real-time.
Liz: They were mostly in educa-
tional settings and it seemed really
experimental as part of substrate
research.
Kyle: But no one had really
focused on making beautiful
aesthetic objects in the theme of
celebration or even that were really
meant to be consumed and also
be beautiful at the same time.And
no one had tried with this ColorJet
Printing technology.And absolutely
no one had opened a business that
described itself as a “3D printing
bakery.” And that really surprised
us that no one had tried that yet.
Liz: It blew our minds.
Kyle: We thought, “There has
to be a market for this.” It’s so
fun — it’s such a cool intersection
between art and technology and
food, which is already a popular
field. How is it possible that no
one had really tried that?So we
had the idea in our first summer
at architecture school and we
thought about dropping out of
school and just pursuing it, but
we’d already dropped out of
one school.
Liz: We were basically too scared
to drop out of two consecutive
grad school programs, so we
decided to stick with it.
Yeah, you hear those sad stories
about really smart people who just
didn’t amount to anything.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, yeah — totally!
[Laughs]
Kyle: It could have been us.And
it probably would’ve been because
3D printing just wasn’t as popular
at the time as it has become. In
the last 18 months, it has risen to
a fever pitch as the prices drop
for popular home printers and
people have realized that it can
really influence all these normal
manufacturing techniques in a big
way, which happened to coincide
with when we graduated.
Liz: We feel pretty strongly
that 3D printing sugar is a good
place to start 3D printing food
because sugar really plugs right
into dessert, and there’s already a
cultural expectation of dessert as
a designed object. It’s a space that
really values embellishment and
customization and experimenta-
tion, and those are all things that
3D printing is really good at.So
it makes it a really good fit for
the technology. We expected to
operate on a really small “custom
3D printing bakery” scale for years
and just test the market and see
what people are interested in.
Because of the climate around 3D
printing right now, that has been
compressed to a matter
of months.
Liz is referring to the interestThe
Sugar Lab garnered from a couple
of men with a little more time in
both the dessert industry and the
3D printing industry: cake king Duff
Goldman and 3D Systems CEO Abe
“Avi” Reichental.
Tell us about the things you’re doing
with Duff Goldman — introduced to
most of us as the pastry innovator
from Food Network’s Ace of Cakes
and now omnipresent dessert
mogul.
Kyle: Duff is a total visionary.
And he has no boundaries when
it comes to imagining what’s
possible.
Liz: Duff wanted a hexagonal
design, which you can see in the
bases. And in designing something
that would be softer, more floral
for the top, Kyle took the hexago-
nal base and then stretched and
squashed it, changing the angles
so it could take on a more floral
shape but still have the feel of the
“IT’S SUCH A COOL
INTERSECTION
BETWEEN ART
AND TECHNOLOGY
AND FOOD.”
GEKP-140100-CAKES.indd 60 10/23/13 4:28 PM

4. 61geekexchange.com
(1) DESIGN
A 3D model of the object is built
using Maya software.They generally
choose their design styles based
on things that absolutely couldn’t
be done without 3D printing, often
featuring complex symmetry, sharp
angles and smooth curves.Here,
their architectural background
comes into play, resulting in dynamic
yet structurally sound results.
(2) PRINTING
ColorJet Printing technology offers some of the fastest 3D output. It takes one hour
per vertical inch of material.For clarity, it only took about two hours to print our model,
and they could print six simultaneously in about three hours.The finished Geek logo is
approximately 2"x 2" x 6".The object is printed in a bed of loose material — a proprietary
blend of granulated white sugars — some of which adheres to the piece and must later be
carefully removed using compressed air.
The blend combines common sugar types (direct from the grocery store) of different
size grains. As Kyle explains, “That’s important to making the surface texture smooth and
strong — that the grains kind of interlock with each other and that’s important to make a
more solid material.”
(3) CLEANING
Kyle calls this cabinet enclosure the “de-sugaring station” but also likes the name Liz has
been calling it: “the excavation station.”Essentially, compressed air is used to gently blast
any excess loose sugar away from the printed sculpture.
(4) COMPLETION
The item is cured with a light spray of vodka for strength — a little tip from cake master
Duff Goldman. (And it’s delicious!) — C.A.S.
hexagon upon which it was based.
Kyle: A lot of the early plan-
ning that we did with Duff was
structural thinking about what we
could do.
And this is where your architectural
background came into play?
Liz: It took us a little while to
realize that, in terms of 3D printing
food, all of the sudden normal
3D printing optimization qualities
aren’t in play as much anymore.
We aren’t trying to make it as
strong as possible — that doesn’t
matter. Because if we’re making it
as strong as possible, then it’s not
fun to eat. You want it to break and
melt in your mouth.So actually,
we’ve become chefs in a way and
you have to think of the end result
and that it’s enjoyable and recog-
nizable as a dessert product.
So your sculptures are
all edible?
Liz: Definitely. They are
just sugar and water.You
wouldn’t necessarily want
to eat the whole cake
topper in much the same
way you might not want
to eat everything that’s
decorating a traditional
wedding cake, but it’s
definitely edible.
GEEK: So how are rapid prototyping and 3D printing the same or different?
Liz von Hasseln: Rapid prototyping is using usually computer-driven
technologies to produce usually one-off custom parts that are often
prototypes. Sometimes they are the final part but often prototypes.So that
can include 3D printing, or CNC [Computer Numerical Control] milling, which
is basically using a drill bit in a subtractive way to carve a material. What’s
another good example?
Kyle von Hasseln: A laser cutter…
Liz: Right. So all those technologies together would fall into rapid
prototyping. And 3D printing is an additive manufacturing process.The three
major classes of 3D printing are:
(1) Extrusion
“The most common example of this is MakerBot.And that’s really using a
heated nozzle to extrude — basically squirt or drizzle — a molten material,
often plastic, in a layer-based way to build an object, layer by layer. It’s an addi-
tive process, sometimes calledFDM, or fused deposition modeling.That’s not
what we are doing.”
(2) Selective Laser Sintering
“This is another big class that’s done using photo catalytic resins or plastics
and applying a laser beam to cure the resin selectively, still in a layer-based
additive manner. But we’re also not doing that.”
(3) ColorJet Printing (CJP)
“This is what we’re using, and it’s an inkjet-based technology.And it’s really
about spreading fine layers of a dry substrate and then using an inkjet — just
like the one you would have in a regular 2D color printer — to apply a binder
to that substrate.So we spread a really fine layer of sugar and then we use an
inkjet to apply water to that sugar layer where the model occurs at that cross
section. And then apply more sugar and apply more water, layer by layer, so we
build the model up from the very bottom layer to the very top layer. Basically,
just by wetting the sugar in a very precise way.” —Corey A. Sienega
THEBASICSOF
BUILDINGBLOCKSNOT UP ON YOUR 3D PRINTING
NOMENCLATURE? THE EXPERTS AT
THE SUGAR LAB ARE HERE TO HELP.
SWEET!THE SUGAR LAB’S FOUR SIMPLE STEPS
TO CREATING COOL 3D SUGAR SCULPTS.
GEKP-140100-CAKES.indd 61 10/23/13 4:28 PM

5. PHOTOBYLIZVONHASSEIN,COURTESYOFTHESUGARLAB
JANUARY 201462
Kyle: You could manually do this
in your kitchen — you could have
a big bowl that’s empty and you
could sift a little bit of sugar in and
then you could take an eye dropper
and then you could wet it and sift
a little more and wet it and inside
you have a kind of sand castle-y
thing emerge that is roughly the
shape of whatever you were think-
ing of making. This just automates
that process. So it’s just frosting
made very carefully.
It’s sweet of Kyle to say, but
it’s one thing for a professional
designer to use his talent along
with CAD systems and Maya soft-
ware (the 3D graphics application
used in movies such as Avatar) and
a modified 3D printer versus the
sugar blob that most of us would
end up with if we attempted this in
our own kitchens.Now, if only we
could all have our own easy-to-use
3D printer to put between the cof-
fee maker and the juicer.
Enter Reichental and his
company, arguably the biggest 3D
printing company in the world.
How did you connect with 3D
Systems?
Liz: We actually knew someone
who worked at 3D Systems and
he emailed us and we eventually
ended up having coffee with him
and he delivered a message from
Abe to us, which was, “How can
we help?”
Kyle: We just talked about our
goals separately for how we saw
this field developing and they just
lined up so perfectly, so it was a
no-brainer to try to find a way to
work together.
And Sugar Lab was recently
acquired by 3D Systems. Had you
patented your ideas and was that
part of the deal?
Kyle: Liz and I patented the
process of using ColorJet Printing
technology to 3D print food. When
3D Systems acquired us they got
our IP [intellectual property],
which matched their IP. But, maybe
more importantly, they got a 3D
printing bakery business, the first
of its kind. Having a 3D printing
bakery is significant because you
get to demonstrate how to make
3D printed food resonate with
people. In this early stage, that
could prove more important than
the technology itself, which is
where others have focused.
I read one reaction to your being
acquired by 3D Systems that
described it as “bittersweet” —
expressing a kind of sadness to see
a promising startup become part of
a giant corporation.
Kyle: I think that kind of skepti-
cism is pervasive and we aren’t
immune to it. But we realized we
can go so far so fast together and
make this technology available to
everyone, and that was our long-
term goal. We thought it would
take decades to get to that place,
and we can do it really quickly and
it’s going to be awesome.
Reichental has been vocal that fig-
uring out how to 3D print chocolate
is his passion. Do you think that also
sparked his interest in Sugar Lab?
Kyle: I think so. And he’s just a
visionary of where 3D printing will
go so I think he had a vision about
this at least as long as we have —
and probably longer.
Will you be part of that effort?
Liz: We hope so; we think we
will. Our title now is creative direc-
tors, food products, so we hope to
be involved in the development of
a lot of experimentation with food.
How has your business changed?
Liz: We’re still operating The
Sugar Lab fairly autonomously as
part of 3D Systems, and are still
taking orders on a really low pro-
duction capacity since we do one
project at a time. We work with the
client and hear about what they
are looking for and what they are
excited to see in sugar for an event
or celebration.And we work with
them to design a custom piece and
produce it in sugar.
What do you do as creative
directors of food products for 3D
Systems?
Kyle: Well, it’s our third week…
[Laughs]
Liz: We’re just really excited to
make the technology of 3D printing
sugar and maybe eventually other
food available to as many people
as possible as soon as possible. We
would really like to democratize
that in much the same way that 3D
Systems has tried to democratize
other forms of 3D printing.
Will you pop up on Home Shopping
Network selling 3D sugar printers
anytime soon?
Liz: [Laughs] It’s possible. We
are definitely not seeking that but
we have been approached.
Kyle: Our big goal forThe
Sugar Lab within 3DSystems is to
demonstrate all the different types
of ways this technology can exist in
the food space, with sugar and with
other things.You just have to think,
“What’s the next most important
food type that’s going to make
people more excited about it?”
Liz: And what’s a good fit for the
technology? We feel strongly that
a really crucial part of continuing
this so-called 3D printing revolution
will be the artist and the role of the
artist or artisan.
Kyle: Definitely. We’d love to
see other Sugar Labs and see
what their ideas are — that would
be really cool.
And here we can really see
where 3D Systems, Kyle and Liz
share a vision. In announcing the
acquisition of The Sugar Lab,
Reichental, noted, “I believe there
is a social covenant for indulgence
that begins with desserts andThe
Sugar Lab will accelerate our ability
to bring edible 3D printables to the
masses while empowering chefs,
restaurateurs and confectioners
with never-before explored digital
creation tools for food.”
So the technology is the tool for the
artist?
Liz: That’s how we see the most
exciting things coming out of it:
when people take the technology
and use it as a tool to whatever
end they are interested in and
often in ways that the technology
wasn’t necessarily designed for or
wasn’t necessarily intended.
That’s exactly what you did.
Kyle/Liz: Yeah! [Laugh]
! READY
TO EAT:
The sugar
Geek logo is
about 700
calories.
“...FOOD EXPERIMENTS
FAIL BECAUSE THEY SAW
IT AS NOVELTY AND
THOUGHT, ‘HOW CAN I 3D
PRINT A PIZZA?’ WHICH IS
REALLY COMPLEX.”
FOR MORE
>I the-sugar-lab.com
>I 3dsystems.com
>I duffscakemix.com
>I charmcitycakeswest.com
GEKP-140100-CAKES.indd 62 10/23/13 4:28 PM

6. 63geekexchange.com
I
f you’ve watched his reality showAce of Cakes or have seen any of the
countless high-profile“Wait, that’s really a cake?!”-style cakes that Duff
Goldman has produced for every celebrity-studded event under the sun, then
you already know he’s an artist-chef-baker-innovator who lives the hottest
business buzzword of the day:disruptive. But something you may not know
about Goldman is that he’s also very generous in sharing the public stage he’s
been given.
Perhaps it’s because it was a stage reluctantly taken.Not that Goldman is one
to shy away from attention, but he had his heart set on becoming a rock star.
He also spent some time building cars and working as a metal sculptor — that is
after his brief career as a graffiti artist was cut short by parents, teachers and the
long arm of the law all encouraging him to find hobbies that were “more legal.”
Cooking and baking were always around, but really just to support his other
pursuits. (Spray paint and acetylene torches aren’t free, you know.) “I cooked to
pay for my art, and then I finally realized that I liked cooking and I was good at it,”
Goldman says. “And I was a history major with a philosophy minor — these arenot
lucrative fields. I always cooked because you can always get a job making food.”
Recognizing he had the ability to become a real chef,Goldman enrolled in
Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in Napa Valley — but, to be clear, even
after graduating and finding work cooking and baking, he still wanted to do
anything but make cakes for a living. In fact, it was really his desire to give being a
rock star one last shot that forced him to open his baking business. “I was getting
burned out on the food business, and I was still young and I was in a band,” he
says. “And I thought to myself, ‘OK, it’s now or never because nobody likes a fat,
40-year-old musician.’”
As a result, Goldman quit his job as a personal chef and started making cakes
in his apartment for extra cash.He’d live bare bones and be a rock star.And cakes
made sense since,A) you could sell just a couple and make decent money, as
opposed to éclairs where you would have to sell 1,000; and B) cakes were the only
thing that he could cook in his apartment.
Goldman had already accumulated what would
become his signature skill set: his nerdy love
of the science of baking, his experience as an
engineer and metal sculptor, his time as a graffiti
artist and, of course, excellent culinary skills.He
started off making traditional cakes, but the
cakes got crazier because he never said no to
whatever people asked him to do — he’d figure
it out because he wanted to sell them.And the
wilder the cakes got, the more customers he
attracted. “I’d started a business and all I was
doing was making cakes, but still I was tryingnot
to make cakes; I was still trying to be a rock star.”
Though cakes dragged Goldman in kicking
and screaming, he eventually fell for them and
managed to leverage the spotlight he has as the
Food Network’s mad baker to become a celebrity
dessert mogul with bakeries on both coasts, a
new bakery/DIY studio called Duff’s Cake Mix and
a comedic game app calledZombie Cupcake Attack.
But it’s through Goldman and his desire to share his pastry pulpit thatGeek
learned about the 3D printing startupThe Sugar Lab. His Charm City Cakes West
bakery was looking to incorporate 3D-printed plastic cake toppers that would
represent the actual bride and groom on their wedding cake when they heard about
what was coming out of The Sugar Lab, even before it had opened its doors: “We
had friends in common and I think they reached out to us and said, ‘Hey, we have
this awesome 3D sugar printer that we invented. What do we do with it?’And I said,
‘I dunno. Let’s figure it out!’”
Recognizing they were kindred spirits,Goldman and The Sugar Lab team — Liz
and Kyle von Hasseln — brainstormed well past cake toppers into structural innova-
tion and all kinds of new cakes that hadn’t been previously possible. Basically,
Goldman, who Kyle describes as “a totally awesome guy and a complete genius,”
wanted to help get the Sugar Lab some attention.Goldman himself says it best:
“I think one of the reasons the sugar printers came to us is that they had this thing
that doesn’t have any obvious practical application. If anyone’s going to figure out
how to make money with it… I mean, that’s whatI do. I make weird ass shit and
figure out how to make money with it.Not to be too pedestrian, but you need to
make a living, too.And the thing about sugar printing… it’s like what I’ve done here
[at Charm City Cakes West]. I’ve taken something that is relatively mundane and
turned it into something that is really artistic, really technical and profitable — from
a business side. I mean, we pay our rent. It’s amazing that we’ve been open for 13
years now — it’s incredible. We employ art students. I love that.”
And Goldman seems genuinely excited to be able to support new food innova-
tors: “I always want to see someone come up with something that’s genius. I just
love it, it’s so neat and I really want to help them. Basically, what I’m trying to do
with them is to crowd source intelligence. I mean, I’ve got a stage. We’re still working
on it, but we’ve done a few things. We did a fundraiser forGLAAD and I used their
sugar creations.And now we’re trying to get a show at LACMA. These guys invented
this cool thing, I make these crazy cakes… Who wouldn’t want to see that?”
ROCKGODOFFROSTING
CREATIVE CAKE
MASTER DUFF
GOLDMAN SHARES
HIS SPOTLIGHT
WITH DESSERT
INNOVATORS.
GEKP-140100-CAKES.indd 63 10/23/13 4:28 PM