Apple’s Power Mac G5 Upgraded Into Functional Cheese Grater

Apple’s 2019 Mac Pro looks similar to the company’s Power Mac G5 in terms of the case, which offers an aluminum housing that seems eerily similar to a cheese grater. Unfortunately, neither case can grate cheese very well, which was noticed by a maker, Clemens Mayer of Mayer Makes, who took it upon himself to rectify the issue by turning an old Power Mac G5 into a functional cheese shredder. What’s more, it’s driven by a Raspberry Pi 4, which is more powerful than the outdated hardware crammed into the Power Mac.

Beyond the Raspberry Pi 4, the Mac Pro G5 Cheese Grater is outfitted with a pair of Sanyo Denki stepper motors, a series of 3D printed gears (PLA), and a Mayer Makes Motion Control development kit that connects to the Pi and is used to drive the grater’s motors and gears. The entire build is powered by a Mayer Moves XP Power AC/DC power supply.

The Mac Pro G5 works by first introducing either hard or soft cheese through the CD drive slot, where the 3D printed gears take hold and grate the cheese into small pieces, which drop into a bowl underneath the mechanism. The process begins automatically when the Pi 4 detects the cheese entering the drive slot.

As a bonus, the Mac Pro G5 also functions as a desktop computer when not grating cheese, with custom I/O ports that allow the Grater to be connected to monitors and other peripherals via HDMI and USB.