This machine creates “sculptures” from ice by laying down thin layers of ice one at a time until a three dimensional ice object is created. It was apparently built as a Canadian university project to prove a concept and obtain grant funding. Several websites tout it as the end of human ice sculptors. One writes: “I am sorry to report that the latest profession to be made obsolete by robots is ice sculpting. Cold-hearted explanation follows.”

    Interestingly, one major flaw in the system is hardly mentioned: the ice produced isn’t clear. Clear ice blocks are produced by allowing ice/water molecules to align themselves into ice’s crystal lattice structure while salts and dissolved air stay in the unfrozen water. This machine does nothing to allow large ice crystals to properly form and the resulting items are a mish mash of tiny crystals oriented in all directions. Light doesn’t have a clear path through these “ice sculptures,” so they don’t have that crystal look. Thus, this robot produces items that look more like snow sculptures than modern ice sculptures.

    Aside from the ice clarity issue, this machine has some other problems with its sculpture production. First, it’s slow. It takes hours to “print” each item. Also, this robot couldn’t create anything that had unsupported overhanging ice (think of icicles) without using a workaround such as a temporary support strut. On the up side, however, the blue ice mug in the photo indicates that this machine might be very good at creating small items from colored ice. The color in the mug is uniform and presumably the coloring is incorporated into the sculpture as it’s being built up. If it were possible to vary the color, like a normal printer would be able to, some fantastic looking colored ice pieces could probably be created!

    In short, as an ice sculptor, I’m not worried. This machine is no threat to what I do, but someday it might be a tool that I could use in my work, especially if the coloring method lives up to its apparent potential. The standard subtractive CNC machine is a much bigger threat to ice sculptors that do all their work by hand, but so far, not many ice artists have been replaced by CNC robots. In fact, I recently heard about one situation in which there are two ice sculpture companies in a city, one carving everything by hand and the other all by machine. The “all by machine” company is the one in trouble and may have already folded! So, an “ice carving robot” is not enough all by itself to guarantee success. There are lots of factors that determine an ice sculpting company’s success or failure; one aspect is generally not enough to make all the difference.

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