Build your food with a 3D Printer

This week lets talk about a different use of 3D printers. Even if when we hear about it, it is difficult to imagine it and to visualize it, but 3D printers have entered also the food sector, the printers are used to design edible products. 

For instance Structure3D, a Canadian startup, has created a printer that enables the user to build a paste using Nutella and icing sugar. Moreover an Italian 3D printer manufacturer company, Sharebot, successfully created items from sugar using a laser sintering (LS). The LS is an additive manufacturing technique that uses a laser as the power source to sinter powdered material, aiming the laser automatically at points in space defined by a 3D model, binding the material together to create a solid structure. The company used the inkjet printing technology to sugar to make solid sugar structures. A last example is the 3D printed pasta from Barilla, the Italian food company. It launched a contest to Barillas pastas consumers to build their own pasta designs in CAD files. The winner would be able to see its design 3D printed by Barilla.

We observe clearly that the possibilities that 3D printers offer are very vast and could fulfill the imagination of any human being.

Sources

http://www.businessinsider.com/3d-printed-foods-2014-9?op=1

http://3dprintingindustry.com/2014/09/26/sharebot-used-snowwhite-laser-sinter-sugar-worked-perfectly/

http://www.dezeen.com/2013/03/27/food-is-the-next-frontier-of-3d-printing-janne-kytannen/