Inspiration
Once upon a time, there was a lonely penguin. He was so lonely he just wished to impress a lady penguin with his technological skills and make his way to her heart in the form of chocolate in the shape of historical artifacts. He dreamed of printing the Eiffel tower when mentioning Paris and the Capitol when mentioning Washington DC. It was the dream of love that inspired this lonely penguin to assemble a team and bring this idea to reality.
How it works
Simple explanation: hot chocolate -> nozzle -> frozen plateau, where it solidifies
Longer explanation: the chocolate, a mix between regular milk chocolate and some coconut oil for hardening. We used dry ice to cool the entire 3d printer with the exception of the nozzle/chocolate container. When it prints, the chocolate hardens and we can print on top of it on the next pass.
Challenges we ran into
PHYSICS! Good god, thermodynamics suck. No seriously, dry ice and limited hardware, not to mention lack of time or desire to do actual calculations made this incredibly difficult
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Making it work? yea... No really, the fact that it works is a freaking miracle.
What we learned
chocolate is delicious, but only in moderate quantities....
What's next for 3D chocolate printer and a penguin
You tell us. We're all very interested in seeing how this can enhance the food industry, as this is in fact a fully modular kit that can be attached to a variety of 3d printer models with relative ease.
Items we used
For the nozzle itself:
- solid funnel
- flexible funnel with extendable neck
- compression fitting (3/4" to 3/8")
- 3/8" OD tube
- metal nozzle (from an old icing kit I had laying around)
For the chocolate:
- glass bowl
- small pan into which the bowl will fit
- chocolate (any kind)
- coconut oil (to raise the hardening temperature) [only a smidge is needed for every batch. trial and error here :D )
Everything else:
- a 3D printer with functional movement components and a heating element (everything else is unnecessary)
- gaff tape to hold it all together
- dry ice (we ended up using a little over 20 pounds, but we had a little too much...)
- pebble watch (for the queue)
Built With
- 3dprinting
- android
- boozallen
- javascript
- pebble
- upmini-3d-printer
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