Design & Development of a 3-D Food Printer

Matt Golding, Richard Archer, Teresa Wegrzyn, Sandra Kim,

Caleb Millen, Grant Ramsay, Scott Pemberton, Gourab Sen Gupta, Terry Southern

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“Consumers are demanding miracle foods

that are totally natural, have zero

calories, zero fats and cholesterol,

delicious taste, total nutrition, low price,

environmentally friendly production,

‘green’ packaging….and that guarantee

perfect bodies, romance and immortality”

(Carol Brookins, Global Food and Agriculture Summit, 1999)

Cost Quality Safety Healthy and

nutritious

Convenient Environment

Introducing Food Fabrication – a step

change in food preparation

and food production: consumer

motivation

Food fabricators present the opportunity for consumers to have direct input into the construction and composition of the food that they eat in fulfilment of these drivers

Convenience (POS/U)

Consumer Input

Quality

Appearance

Texture

Taste

Flavour

Health & Nutrition

Cost

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Extension of concept to produce designer foods from base materials

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Progression of concept to reality – developments in food fabricators around the world

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Aim Riddet-Massey Food Printer - To develop colour printing capability for customised food fabrication (3-D rendering) •‘Fabrication’: continuous, e.g. 3-D prototyping •‘Customised’: shapes, flavours, texture, nutritional value, appearance; end-user operated •‘Colour printing’: render any (digital) 2-D colour image as identical 3-D replicate within food matrix

Printer capability in 2-D – commercialised elsewhere

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Set up and requirements

• Software

• Hardware

• Primary colorants

• Raw food paste

• Secondary processing

• Speed, accuracy

• Wide colour output

• Predictable colour

• Controlled delivery of materials/colorants

• Predictable cooked structure

Paste stream layers

Z

X, Y

Dye blends for each voxel

Printer capability in 3-D – novel challenge

Pt I – Printer design and construction

Development of printer construct

Software Interface Control box

Assembly of printer unit

First iteration of printer

• Allows for spatial deposition of food

substrate (batter)

• Can create layer-by layer structures

• Rendition of text within substrate

• Requires development to enable control of process flow and mixing

(variable composition effects, accurate and precise colour mixing

and deposition)

• Secondary process falls outside of scope of current design

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Complexity

Pt II - Developing a colour model to enable accurate reproduction of colours in food

‘Image’ ‘Colorants’ ‘Substrate’ ‘3-D printed food’

Standard colour tiles Synthetic food dyes (3 primaries)

Microwave-baked model food (cake)

One colour per sample

Computer colour matching

Food CMYK colour printing

•Calculates concentrations •Quick •Instrumental •Based on spectral properties of dyes

•Visual •Empirical •Tailored to food substrate •Longer turnaround time

•Surface specific (2-D not 3-D outcome) •Depends on orientation, as well as amount, of colour dots

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Considerations in developing a colour matching model

Dyes

Absorb and

reflect light;

possible

limits on usage levels

Substrate

Contributes

background

colour, and

structure related light scattering

effects

Processing

Mixing

Partitioning

Heating

1. Derive unit absorption coefficients (k/s) for dyes

2. Derive absorption/scatter ratio (K/S) for substrate

3. Match a set of standard colour targets i.e. solve for unknown dye concentrations, c1, c2, c3

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kc

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Development of technique used in paint, plastics, textiles, ceramics industries based on manipulation of primary colours

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Green 2.7 (3.8) Diff Green 2.2 (3.4)

Yellow 8.5 (12.0) Deep Pink 2.7 (4.5)

Mid Grey 4.8 (5.0) Deep Grey 4.3 (3.4)

Diff Grey 1.6 (1.4) Cyan 12.1 (19.3)

Deep Blue 6.1 (9.0) Orange 8.9 (18.4) Red 3.7 (7.3)

Numerical differences: CIEDE2000 (and ΔEab)

‘Good match’ said to be ΔEab ≤ 3; closeness of match dependent on relative gamuts

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Update 2. Quantifying foam structure formation

Rice1 Rice2 Blackgram Chickpea Pea Sorghum

1.0 mm

0.5 mm

Pt III - Developing Controllable Structured Substrates Effect of formulation on crumb structure of final product

Update 2. Bubble distributions in batter and in cooked bread

Batter Bubble count Cooked Bubble SizeBatter Bubble size

Translate into quantitative analysis of structural components

Importance of material transitions required for final product

3- 6 months 4 – 8 minutes 0.25-24 hours

Cook Form

Mix

Stable FINK paste

Ready-to-eat Customised Food

Summary

• Food fabricators and printers enable unlimited consumer flexibility in choice of food properties • Initial concept systems have progressed to first prototypes • Riddet-Massey 3-D printer enables simple deposition and assembly of pumpable materials. • Ongoing work on flow, mixing and food material properties to enable accurate colour rendition and recreation • Application is for personalised appearance, but extension to other sensory properties and selective nutrition