3D Food Printer?

unicoder

3D Food Printer?
March 03, 2011 02:20PM

Registered: 13 years ago
Posts: 116

Saw this article in Popular Science about a 3D food printer. I was wondering, has anyone extended, thought about, or plans to extend a reprap to print food?

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VDX

Re: 3D Food Printer?
March 03, 2011 04:21PM

Admin
Registered: 16 years ago
Posts: 13,886

... this is common with 3D-printers equipped with paste-dispensers like fab@home - look at the different materials: [www.fabathome.org]

I built a paste-dispenser and tried different materials, but received the best results with milling moulds for choclate ...

Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

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unicoder

Re: 3D Food Printer?
March 03, 2011 05:26PM

Registered: 13 years ago
Posts: 116

Very cool, thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I had no idea the variety of different print heads people had come up with.
I have seen on thingiverse and here a few different objects that have to do with eating/storing food, but this got me wondering: is it safe to eat food that has come in contact with ABS or PLA? You would need to make sure you printed it with food-grade plastic to be really safe, right? And what about dishwasher/microwave safe, is there a plastic repraps can print with that is usable with food?

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VDX

Re: 3D Food Printer?
March 03, 2011 05:40PM

Admin
Registered: 16 years ago
Posts: 13,886

AFAIK if you don't have additives in your plastic, then it should be 'food-safe' - so better use pure plastic without colouring.

The common dispenser-cartouches used as dispensers are medical-grade, so even better than food-grade winking smiley

Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

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Jordan Fry

Re: 3D Food Printer?
October 05, 2011 01:14PM

Hi,
I'm currently in the process of creating a 3D food printer. Check it out here and also here.
Many thanks,
Jordan

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DeuxVis

Re: 3D Food Printer?
October 05, 2011 02:56PM

Admin
Registered: 12 years ago
Posts: 2,569

I think you need to work a lot more before expecting crowd funding to work. More detailed specs, pictures, videos...

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guest

Re: 3D Food Printer?
October 23, 2011 08:21PM

How about a powder solution?
Print with a calcium solution on sodium alginate...

[en.wikipedia.org]

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VDX

Re: 3D Food Printer?
October 24, 2011 03:50AM

Admin
Registered: 16 years ago
Posts: 13,886

... or pasta dough and an IR-heater - they're many ways to deal with printing edible stuff grinning smiley

The main problem is maintaing of all the parts in contact with the food, so it's not contaminating the result with germs or other harmfull stuff ...

Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

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JoeDaStudd

Re: 3D Food Printer?
October 24, 2011 07:20AM

Registered: 12 years ago
Posts: 187

VDX Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ... or pasta dough and an IR-heater - they're many
> ways to deal with printing edible stuff grinning smiley

>
> The main problem is maintaing of all the parts in
> contact with the food, so it's not contaminating
> the result with germs or other harmfull stuff ...

Or use a headed bed to cook/bake the dough/mixture.
The only trouble would be cooking the upper layers.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/2011 07:23AM by JoeDaStudd.

My Reprap blog

jds-reprap.blogspot.com

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ttsalo

Re: 3D Food Printer?
January 14, 2012 02:59PM

Registered: 12 years ago
Posts: 313

I built this thing and extruded some wheat dough with it:

[www.thingiverse.com]

I'm pretty sure it could also extrude tomato sauce and melted cheese. That would make a basic pizza, right?

It would be pretty easy to design a nozzle to which three separate pumps could be connected to. A heated bed could probably cook the bottom while the upper layers are being printed.

I'm still thinking of starting with chocolate. Failed prints can be easily and personally recycled and it doesn't go bad, unprotected, at room temperature, like most other stuff.

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Robert

Re: 3D Food Printer?
March 06, 2012 02:23PM

Hi,
there's been a kick starter project for this in the past. It didn't get very far though.
I think this was the one - [www.indiegogo.com]

unicoder Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Saw this article in Popular Science about a 3D
> food printer. I was wondering, has anyone
> extended, thought about, or plans to extend a
> reprap to print food?

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ttsalo

Re: 3D Food Printer?
March 07, 2012 07:56AM

Registered: 12 years ago
Posts: 313

I designed this Chocolate Extruder.

The same mechanism works for many other materials too, but getting them fed into the extruder is still work in progress.

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Mazaw

Re: 3D Food Printer?
March 14, 2012 10:26PM

Registered: 12 years ago
Posts: 108

There's always Candyfab. Unfortunately (or fortunately for those not wishing to become diabetic), http://www.candyfab.org/ is down at the moment.