Charles R. Goulding and Preeti Sulibhavi serve up a look at 3D printing taking homemade pizzas to the next level.
There’s nothing quite like a warm slice of oven-fresh pizza. Whether it is thin crust or Sicilian, pizza has an undeniable effect on almost everyone’s tastebuds, and the best slices (and where we ate them) remain with us forever. But what if you could bring that oven-fresh taste to your own home backyard? We are not talking about your typical grocery store frozen pizza. No, we are referring to Ooni pizza ovens.
Ooni Pizza Ovens
From wood-fired flavor to gas-powered consistency, Ooni pizza ovens offer customers the perfect oven for the perfect backyard slice. The quality of pizza that these ovens deliver surpass the traditional home oven or grill. So the awesome slice of pizza you remember eating is not one from a hole-in-the-wall pizza spot in New York City but is found in your own backyard.
The oven cooks at 950 degrees Fahrenheit so the pizza is crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside (with perfect crusts you won’t want to leave behind). The oven takes 15 minutes to heat up and the pizza cooks in just one minute. Ooni even offers tips and recipes on how to get make the best dough and sauce for your pizza on their website.
3D Printing: Enhancing the Pizza Oven Experience
If it is not obvious, then one should note that an Ooni pizza oven is not complete without accessories. This is where 3D printing can enhance the Ooni experience for homemade pizza lovers.
Whether it is a pizza peel, pizza oven brush, a mobile pizza oven cover, an oven stand or oven feet cover, 3D printing can produce all the necessary pizza accessories in a fast and quick way. And, the results are high quality and durable. The picture below is of a set of Ooni pizza oven shoes (or table mounts) that were 3D printed.
The Research & Development Tax Credit
Whether it is used for creating and testing prototypes or for final production, 3D printing is a great indicator that R&D Credit eligible activities are taking place. Companies implementing this technology at any point should consider taking advantage of R&D Tax Credits.
Enacted in 1981, the now permanent Federal Research and Development (R&D) Tax Credit allows a credit that typically ranges from 4%-7% of eligible spending for new and improved products and processes. Qualified research must meet the following four criteria:
- Must be technological in nature
- Must be a component of the taxpayer’s business
- Must represent R&D in the experimental sense and generally includes all such costs related to the development or improvement of a product or process
- Must eliminate uncertainty through a process of experimentation that considers one or more alternatives
Eligible costs include U.S. employee wages, cost of supplies consumed in the R&D process, cost of pre-production testing, U.S. contract research expenses, and certain costs associated with developing a patent.
On December 18, 2015, President Obama signed the PATH Act, making the R&D Tax Credit permanent. Since 2016, the R&D credit has been used to offset Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) for companies with revenue below $50MM and, startup businesses can obtain up to $250,000 per year in payroll tax cash rebates.
A Slice of Heaven in Your Own Backyard
While there are distinctions to what makes a great slice of pizza, we can all agree that a pie made fresh from your own backyard oven is a definite plus. We believe that 3D printing can only enhance this experience by providing the necessary accessories to operate and maintain Ooni pizza ovens. Buon sapore!
