University of Exeter Chocolate Machine Design
Chocolate products are currently made from a moulding process which produces common and familiar shapes such as bars, Easter eggs, or animal/human features in large quantities so to find a unique chocolate gift with your own touch, particularly for your love in Valentine Day, up until now has not be possible. However, a Chocolate Additive Layer Manufacturing (ChocALM) machine developed by The University of Exeter is now capable of directly ‘printing’ 3D objects in edible chocolate using a layer-by-layer build up approach. This machine is effectively a novel 3D chocolate printer that can produce chocolate products exactly as a 3D model designed in your own computer. Imagine you could draw a 3D ‘face’ model of someone or extract it from a personal photo, send it to the 3D printer and watch it grow in front of you from chocolate. This will be absolutely cool, but also send delights to your loved one who receives chocolate as gifts. It becomes possible now as ChocALM machine has drawn its own name and written it out using chocolate! This machine has also printed out a cylindrical ‘drinking glass’ 3D object.
The capability of the machine is still developing along the research project conducted by Dr Liang Hao and a group of Final Year Engineering Students. The vision is to bring the ChocALM machine to a commercial prototype as well as equip the machine with two printing heads, which draw dark, and white chocolate materials at the same time, producing innovative chocolates. More details of the project are available on the website: http://chocalm.org/joomla/.
