Customizing Food with an Additive Manufacturing Technology

The development of open Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies, such as the Fab@Home system, has emerged as a freeform approach capable of producing complex three-dimensional objects with a broad variety of materials. The main objective of this work is to analyze and optimize the manufacturing capacity of this system when producing 3D edible objects. A new heated syringe deposition tool was developed and several process parameters were optimized to adapt this technology to consumers needs. The results revealed in this study show the potential of this system to produce customized edible objects without qualified personnel knowledge, therefore saving manufacturing costs compared to traditional technologies.