Today we’re talking about the most delicious form of 3D Printing -- FOOD!
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00:00 3D Printing Food Overview
00:43 What Foods Can Be 3D Printed?
01:45 Where Can You Get 3D Printed Food?
02:46 Pros & Cons of 3D Printing Food
04:18 How Do You Design 3D Printed Food?
Generally speaking, 3D printed food is a meal prepared through an automated additive process. Think of those pizza vending machines that surfaced back in 2015. The dough is prepared, extruded, topped with tomato sauce and cheese, and finally sent to the oven - all within the same machine. Now in 2020, we have exclusive 3D printing restaurants and dozens of food printers available on the market.
Food 3D printers are mostly suited for architecting intricate shapes and designs, not actually cooking the ingredients. The PancakeBot is a machine that only makes pancakes by extruding the batter directly onto a hotplate.
Today, food 3D printers are mostly used for gourmet dining, be it in molecular kitchens or fancy bakeries. Back in 2016, two world-class chefs created a new restaurant concept in London, named Food Ink. The idea at first was just to serve 3D printed dishes, but eventually, they went as far as having only 3D printed furniture in the restaurant.
Bakers have made headlines for printing edible wedding cake decorations and for all you pizza lovers, 3D printed pizzas are coming. Your best chances would be in 3D printing events or culinary conventions such as 3D food printing conferences, as this new technology has not achieved much commercial success. Yet.
Pros
- Personalizing meals: In terms of controlling the diversity and amount of nutrients, vitamins, and calories per meal, 3D printing food allows for precision. This could be extremely important in hospitals where restricted diets are more common, and offers the potential for easy patient customization.
- Unconventional food consumption: When you process nutritious plants and protein-rich insects in a semi-liquid state, these foods could be presented in a more attractive way and thus incentivize their consumption.
- Easy reproducibility: Sharing recipes could be as simple as transferring a digital file over the internet. All that would be required is the same raw materials, printing settings, and compatible printing equipment.
Cons
- A very simple six-layer design can take 7 minutes to print, while more detailed 3D models take more than 45 minutes each. It might not sound too much a first, but at these speeds, the whole enterprise lacks scalability.
- The cost of equipment and consumables
- The edibles used in these machines either require pre-cooking or pre-processing to achieve the consistency required for extrusion
- Reproducibility and reliability for these machines depend heavily on the proper preparation, which means more processed food, which as everyone knows, is not exactly healthy.
Plenty of food 3D printers come with proprietary softwares that support “part” designing. These are usually practical and user-friendly programs that limit the tools required for intricate 3D projects. For the most part, though, that’s all the food 3D printers of today can handle in terms of complexity.
3D printed food also has a bright future in space exploration, as NASA and other private companies are already planning missions to Mars. According to NASA, such missions will take between one and three years to complete and the agency is currently looking into ways to enhance their life aboard the spaceships.
PRINTERS MENTIONED:
04:58 byFlow Focus
www.3dbyflow.com/order-now-basic
05:28 MMuse
www.aniwaa.com/product/3d-pri...
05:48 Foodini
www.naturalmachines.com/
06:10 Mycusini
mycusini.com/
06:39 PancakeBot
www.pancakebot.com/
07:18 Procusini
www.procusini.com/
07:50 WASP 2040
www.3dwasp.com/en/the-3d-prin...
08:09 ZMORPH THICK-PASTE EXTRUDER
zmorph3d.com/
08:31 STRUCTUR3D DISCOV3RY
all3dp.com/structur3d-makes-s...
08:46 Wiiboox Sweetin
www.wiiboox.com/3d-printer-wi...
08:55 Createbot 3D Food Printer
Let us know what kind of food you want to see 3D printed in the future in the comments section!
At Vision Miner, we specialize in Functional 3D printing, especially high-performance plastics like PEEK, ULTEM, PPSU, PPS, CFPA, and more. If you're interested in using functional 3D printing and materials in your business, feel free to reach out, and we can help you make the right choice for your application.
Call 833-774-6863 or email contact@visionminer.com, and we're here to help!
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