I really like chocolate,and so do my kids. They eat more of it than I do, but I like to sneak me a bit every now and then, as the crumbs in my keyboard can attest. I talked about the Solar Sinter 3D printer a while back that made things out of desert sand. This 3D printer is much more interesting because rather than sand, it uses yummy chocolate to print.
The 3D chocolate printer was funded with a grant and designed by Dr. Liang Hao at the University of Exeter in partnership with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). He says that he chose chocolate because it’s cheap, easily malleable, and yields no waste. The cool part about an experiment on this thing is that you can eat whatever is left over or melt it down. Try that with sand.
The printer is envisioned to be used to allow people to place an order online and upload a digital design to be made into chocolate. Hao does say that the printer could easily be adapted to use other materials as well for printing jewelry and more.
[via inhabitat]
