Multi-Material Three-Dimensional Food Printing with Simultaneous Infrared Cooking

Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) food printing, or food layered manufacture (FLM), is a novel application of additive manufacturing (AM) that creates a customizable meal at maximal convenience. While conventional 3D printers use plastics and metals as their base material, a 3D food printer (3DFP) uses food. Most 3DFPs do not require heat to process food since they print confectionary treats and other materials that do not require heating before consumption. Current 3DFPs that produce meals that require cooking use traditional convective or conductive methods to process food after the printing process, which limits their ability to combine multiple materials in a single food object. Integrating an infrared lamp heating mechanism into the printer allows for more precise spatial control of the heat being delivered to printed food, the ability to create complex food patterns with more ingredient complexity, and the integration of multiple food ingredients in a single 3D object. This novel approach to onboard cooking allows users to combine different ingredients - such as chicken with dough - and cook each ingredient selectively. Chefs can experiment with new food combinations and explore novel culinary innovations. The machine's ability to selectively cook and print multi-material food objects represents a significant achievement in this particular application of AM and brings users one step closer to achieving customizable meal-based FLM.