3D FOOD PRINTER: DEVELOPMENT OF DESK-TOP 3D PRINTING SYSTEM FOR FOOD PROCESSING

Abstract

About 15-25&37 of aging population suffer from swallowing difficulties&44 and increase in personalized meal requirements creates an increasing market need for food mass customization&46 Food industry is investigating mass customization techniques to meet individual needs on taste&44 nutrition and mouthfeel&46 3D Food Printing is one of the potential solutions to overcome drawbacks of current food customization techniques such as lower production efficiency and high manufacturing cost&46 This thesis introduces the first generation food printer concept designs and functional prototypes that target to revolutionize customized food fabrication by 3D Printing&46 Different from robotics-based food manufacturing technologies which are designed to automate manual processes for mass production&44 3D Food Printing integrates 3DP and digital gastronomy techniques to customize food products&46 This introduces artistic capabilities into domestic cooking&44 and extends customization capabilities to industrial culinary sector&46 Their applications in domestic cooking or catering services can not only provide an engineering solution for customized food design and personalized nutrition control&44 but also have potential to reconfigure customized food supply chains&46 In this development and research&44 selected prototypes and commercial products are reviewed based on fabrication platforms and printing technologies&46 A detailed discussion is done on specific 3DP technologies and their associate printing process for 3D customized food fabrication&46 Besides&44 significance and projections of future food printing are also discussed&46 In this project&44 a home use desktop 3D Cookie Printer was prototyped and related experiments were carried out to optimize the printing performance&46 This desktop food printer is able to print customized cookie products&44 and other materials were also tested&46 Besides&44 ideas and early stage development were initiated to enable the concept of mixing different food materials to demonstrate the possibility of customizing food products in terms of ingredient compositions&46 Last but not the least&44 project has gone through media exposure&46 The printer prototype and printing process were demonstrated in several art and science exhibitions&46 During each exhibition&44 market survey on development printer and food printing concept has been conducted to collect feedback from the public&46 From the analysis of the survey results&44 a certain level of market validation has been achieved&46