I love a good blender. Look at that row of buttons! 15 of them! That must mean it does a *whole bunch* of things!

err... no, it doesn't. Those poor little apricots can't tell the difference between setting 7 and setting 8. I can't tell by ear, or by eye, either.

So, let's look at the possibilities.

We could control, besides speed: the blender's blade pitch, and the angle of the swash plate.

If all we wanted was for it to fly, that would be enough.

But we should also take into consideration control of turbulence and cavitation, which means we need to be able to independently control the upper and lower blade's up/down tilt, and their rotation direction (of course, tilt will have to be safety-locked out of the interference zones when you have the blades counter-rotating).

And, because your foody-goop sometimes becomes dynamically uncooperative by surging up and down, or hovering above the blender blades, there should be speed & torque sensors, scanners that can detect bubbles & chunks, and all these can feed info to the control processor. Which is programmable, of course, in several high- and low-level languages.

Of course, an extended training period is required; and for a reasonable fee, you can become certified in safe and effective operation techniques.

(Idea courtesy of my youngest offspring, who should just get his own darn halfbakery account so I can extort votes...)
-- lurch, Oct 08 2009

Maestro blending; Formal dress. http://www.davosfes..._Theremin%20(2).jpg
[loonquawl, Oct 08 2009]

I propose the theremin-blender, where you wave your hands around the blender to control blade speed and pulse frequency.
-- sninctown, Oct 08 2009


GIve him an account and this bun.
-- wagster, Oct 08 2009


[+] for [snictowns] interface method.
-- loonquawl, Oct 08 2009


Brilliant - a blender with controls labelled the same as helicopter flight controls, e.g. "Collective Pitch" and "Cyclic", would be just the thing for the tech-savvy gourmet. It would be good also to have a "Precession" control.
-- hippo, Oct 08 2009


Pure class.
-- zen_tom, Oct 08 2009


sp. "Control-freak's blender", unless the title is an order to usurp control of a blender that is owned by an unhinged freak, who just happens to be blending in your house, possibly grasping in one hand your pet kitten by the tail, and waving around the whirring vessel of pet-doom in the other – in which case, freak on.
-- theleopard, Oct 08 2009


This idea reminds me - I was very impressed with my new washing machine, which does its final spin at 1400 rpm (pretty fast - more than 20 rotations per second!). However the clever bit is, as the spin speed increases it will slow down and speed up a few times to shift the soggy clothes around in order to balance the load so that the machine doesn't vibrate itself to death when it gets to 1400 rpm.
-- hippo, Oct 08 2009


And a full panel of instrumentation, of course .... [+]
-- 8th of 7, Oct 08 2009


...and telemetry
-- hippo, Oct 08 2009


I'm now imagining something like the NASA control room, with a giant real-time wall display of the inside of the blender, and rows of chefs sitting at their consoles, each responsible for one sub-system within the blender, and reporting in to their own off-site backup team. Live commentary would be broadcast on the internet by the in-house media unit.
-- pocmloc, Oct 08 2009


The ratings for 'Will It Blend' just skyrocketed.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 08 2009


[theleopard] re: title - you're quite right. Thank you.
-- lurch, Oct 08 2009



random, halfbakery