In keeping with the Singapore College of Expertise and Design (SUTD), a staff of researchers has developed new methods to freely produce and customise the meals that we eat. Their findings, titled ‘Multi-material direct ink writing 3D meals printing utilizing multi-channel nozzle’, have been revealed within the journal Future Meals.
“Printing meals in 3D permits the customization of vitamins, the creation of aesthetically pleasing meals, and the modification of meals texture to swimsuit particular person dietary wants,” stated Michinao Hashimoto, Principal Investigator and an Affiliate Professor at SUTD.
Some repurposed meals sources, similar to okara (soybean dregs), orange peels, and bug protein, are likely to keep at bay appetites by their appearances and origins. By adjusting the printing parameters, researchers can incorporate edible and nutrient-rich elements from these uncommon sources, and assemble an aesthetically pleasing meal. On the identical time, people with consuming issues or who’ve issue swallowing (dysphagic) can customise their mealtime expertise and enhance their consuming habits.
Different researchers have efficiently printed meals utilizing chocolate, milk, gelatin, and vegetable inks, however these constructs are largely confined to single elements. Present strategies wrestle with seamless transitions between supplies – resulting in fragmented prints and elevated complexity within the machine printing course of, in accordance with Dr. Lee Cheng Pau, lead researcher of the SUTD research.
One widespread strategy makes use of a number of nozzles to carry and eject totally different meals constituents. Requiring cautious machine design and nozzle alignment when printing, this strategy has discontinuous interfaces the place totally different supplies overlap and lengthy printing instances. Affiliate Prof Hashimoto and the staff favor a distinct strategy – taking inspiration from microfluidics. With twin inlets and a single outlet, this strategy mitigates the intricacies of switching between a number of nozzles by combining the meals pipelines earlier than the printing stage.
Nevertheless, complexities similar to backflows into the ingredient inlets are likely to occur with fluids of various rheological properties – similar to stream and viscosity. For instance, squeezing out a dab of toothpaste requires extra power than pouring out water. If the 2 had been to feed right into a single outlet, pushing out toothpaste would possible ship some paste up into the water inlet.
Step one in overcoming this problem was to widen the exit outlet of the Y-junction within the printer to accommodate meals ingredient inks which can be high-yield-stress, which require extra pressure to extrude. This variation gives a decrease resistance for the stream – stopping the ink from going up the flawed channel within the printer.
Along with this, it was essential to account for the delay within the meals ink transition. As the situation for the switching between inks not occurs on the printing nozzle, the researchers carried out an offset for the printing algorithm. This enabled seamless and steady printing between inks with vastly totally different rheological properties, with minimal backflow. The staff hopes to optimize the design and expertise additional to accommodate extra inlets and progress towards business scalability.
“Our expertise can be utilized to 3D print meals consisting of a number of supplies with out compromising the printed constructions and look,” stated Dr. Lee. “It may be utilized in creating meals tailor-made to particular person dietary wants, aesthetically pleasing dishes, and interactive meals experiences similar to edible QR codes.”
