Manual Chocolate 3D Printer

Printing Chocolate

This project was the academic culmination of my time at secondary school. The A-level brief was simple: design something, and build it. Inspired by mine and my sisters' attempt to build Zumbo's legendary gingerbread house, I had become intrigued by the versatility of chocolate that results from its complex phase structure. Without really knowing if it was achievable, I attempted to build a manually-controlled chocolate 3D printer.

The Design

The operator controls everything. With one hand they push chocolate through a temperature-regulated hopper, through a nozzle and onto a build-platform whose positioned is adjusted continually with the other hand. The height of the platform is manually adjusted after each layer, allowing the user to gradually build up a model.

The effectiveness of the printer as a teaching mechanism surprised even myself. The association between inputs and outputs made complex variables like flow rates, layer heights, temperatures, cooling times and geometric limitations, intuitive to understand.