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I have seen lots of printers that print chocolate using a syringe with molten chocolate. But, even cooler, would it be possible to print chocolate using some kind of feed system for continuous chocolate printing, so large objects and for a prolonged time, not only lasting the content of one syringe with molten chocolate ?

Things to consider are IMO:

  • How to keep the chocolate long enough in a molten, viscous state enough to print ?
  • Chocolate needs a tempering temperature, which means it needs to be around 32-37 degrees celsius, else it doesn't shine but gets a dull look (or turns white after a while).
  • Chocolate is food, so you need foodsave equipment in the whole chain that is in contact with the chocolate.

Maybe a peristaltic pump that keeps pumping the molten chocolate to the extruder, which might be a valve that can be open/closed from G-code ?

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    $\begingroup$ For some cases you are better of printing a two part negative (mold) from food safe PLA and pouring molten chocolate from a hole you designed in your editor. I think there are scripts/tools for generating molds. They are usually used for making candle or soap molds and such but could be adopted for choloclate. That mold will not be too reusable as tiny pieces can get trapped between the layers and rot. But you could use it to make a batch of cholocate figures in a day or so. On the contrary, if your print takes 10+ hours a syringe printed might not work because it might spoil during printing. $\endgroup$
    – Leo Ervin
    Feb 12, 2016 at 16:22
  • $\begingroup$ continued: the walls of the mold might need to be covered with some food safe material to prevent the choloclate sticking to it $\endgroup$
    – Leo Ervin
    Feb 12, 2016 at 16:26
  • $\begingroup$ Hello @Dimitri Modderman, I noticed your question has been up for a while now. Have any of the answers below been able to solve your question? If so, would you mind accepting the appropriate answer. If not, what is missing so that we may help you further? Also, if you have figured it out on your own, you can always answer and accept your own solution. Thank you. $\endgroup$
    – StarWind0
    Feb 7, 2017 at 19:15
  • $\begingroup$ I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is a recommendation question. $\endgroup$
    – Trish
    Jan 1, 2019 at 21:11

2 Answers 2

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Update: I found a nice article about chocolate printing: https://all3dp.com/2/chocolate-3d-printer-all-you-need-to-know/

You are searching for chocolate extruder. I did not find one, which would fulfill all your requirements. You have to adapt each solution.

Zmorph3d Liquid paste extruder

According video on the page you insert chocolate in liquid form. That could be solved with heated chocolate container.

Syringe based extruders

You can use a 2 liters syringe. And if this is not enough then you can refill during print.

Convert pellet extruder

Printing from chocolate pellets is simpler then printing from plastic pellets. Therefore if you use foodsave parts to build such a extruder then this is useable for you.

Cooling

Shop

by Open-Electronics

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  • $\begingroup$ Great answer. One comment I would make this a bit less Link dependent. So that when in the future and a large portion of these links no longer work, the answer still works. IE posting the names along with the links. $\endgroup$
    – StarWind0
    Nov 13, 2016 at 5:15
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I would look into what Hershey did for this chocolate printer in junction with 3ds. Behold state of the art Chocolate 3d printing.. The CocoJett

That said there is little said about their tank system.

Far as the actual question it self. There is nothing to facilitate a large pool of continuous chocolate. It would be easy enough to build something that stirred the chocolate and a pump that feeds it in. At that point we are talking about a fair amount of new engineering. One could figure out how to map the E extrusion to a pump that would refill what was spent.

This section is just a bit of speculation.. I wonder. It seems to me that the way to go for XL coco printing would be powder. Bind it with an edible adhesive (hot sugar water maybe?). Have the printer refrigerated. Or just have a simple system that can change out the syringes of coco. Last you could just pause it while you change syringes.

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