Attention all chocolate lovers – ever fancied designing and making your own chocolates? Well now you can. See the world’s first chocolate printer in action!
Well, we’re interested in chocolate and 3D printing, and we thought you might be too!
Choc Edge is launching the world first commercial 3D chocolate printer, Choc Creator, so you can now make your very own personalised chocolate.
The chocolate printer works in the same way as normal 3D printers: instead of using plastic, wood and metal to create objects, the Choc Edge uses layers of chocolate. Yum!
The research and development began as a Masters student project at the University of Exeter, led by Dr Liang Hao in 2007.
“3D printing or Additive Layer Manufacturing (ALM) describes a host of technologies that are used to fabricate physical objects directly from CAD data sources,” reads the Choc Edge website.
Dr Hao told the BBC that chocolate printing, just like any other 3D printing technique, starts with a flat cross-section image – similar to that produced by ordinary printers turning out images, and then prints out chocolate layer by layer to create a 3D shape, without any moulding tools.
“In 3D chocolate printing, chocolate is melted, tempered and deposited into 2D cross-sections on a substrate like a printer printing a 2D image onto paper. The substrate is then lowered by a layer thickness and the deposition process repeats layer-by-layer to form a solid 3D chocolate product that is defined by a 3D computer design.”
Let us know what you think of this wonderful innovation via the comments box below, or via the 3D World Facebook page or Twitter.
We reckon printing personalised faces might be best saved for the winter months, otherwise you could end up with a melty monstrosity!
Posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012 at 12:35 pm under Features, Technology. You can subscribe to comments. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
Tags: Choc Edge, chocolate printer, Fun technology
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