This device would consist of:

A wax reservoir containing translucent wax
Four pigment reservoirs
wax melter/mixer with pigment injection
A low powered press for forcing the wax through a hole.
A single pixel/24 color display
A numerical keypad with a "make it" button
A simple internal computer control device
A simple label printer capable of printing out the new crayon's color in RRGGBB format, with two additional notations for how dark the new crayon is.
A label hopper containing labels with a water-activated glue strip down one side.

The purpose and combination of these items is, I think, obvious.

edited
-- Voice, Oct 03 2014

As [scad_mientist] said... http://video.pbs.org/video/1324143164/
[normzone, Oct 03 2014]

Crayon_20Printer [calum, Oct 05 2014]

Solid Ink Printer http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_ink
[senatorjam, Oct 05 2014]

Instead of one wax reservoir and four pigments, why not just have four reservoirs of coloured waxes (red, green, blue and black)?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 03 2014


Ah, hang on - white will be a problem.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 03 2014


I thought this would use 3D printer technology to allow making a crayon in any shape.

As described your idea is just a highly automated version of the Crayola Crayon Maker.
-- scad mientist, Oct 03 2014


And yellow
-- scad mientist, Oct 03 2014


You mean this is not a plotter that uses Crayons? Oh...too bad.
-- normzone, Oct 03 2014


The Crayola Crayon Maker is not good. It is small, slow and makes little crayons with inferior molds. What is needed is a teflon coated oven pan with crayon shaped molds for serious crayon recycling. I am so surprised that molds of this sort are not sold. Lots of teachers would recycle their crayons.
-- bungston, Oct 03 2014


//Instead of one wax reservoir and four pigments, why not just have four reservoirs of coloured waxes (red, green, blue and black)?//

The addition of a white wax would solve this problem. I like your idea better.
-- Voice, Oct 03 2014


And I thought this would be about a printer that USES crayons....
-- Vernon, Oct 03 2014


Ditto normzone and Vernon
-- not_morrison_rm, Oct 03 2014


Got three buns for you...is there like a paypal for buns?
-- not_morrison_rm, Oct 05 2014


Waves a hearty hello to [senatorjam], your link comes very close to this. But a substantial idea anyway. Hey where you been jam man?
-- blissmiss, Oct 05 2014


I thought that was Granola...

Looking at the "solid" ink printer blurb....it's a big girly fib. It melts the ink to print and needs a vacuum pump to debung ink from the printhead at the end of a print run.

Crayon, crayons, crayons!
-- not_morrison_rm, Oct 05 2014



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