Collaborative Heterogeneous Mini-Robotic 3D Printer for Manufacturing Complex Food Structures with Multiple Inks and Curved Deposition Surfaces

Abstract

The necessity of developing more realistic artificial food requires the aggregation of different biomaterials in an ordered and controlled manner. One of the most advanced methods for this is food printers reproducing additive manufacturing processes. This study presents a fully automatized 3D food printer leveraging collaborative Cartesian and multi-ink robotic systems to create complex food structures, with materials with different rheological settings using a screw conveyor configuration with controlled motion velocity. The developed food printer followed a formal mechatronic design strategy with fully functional instrumentation and automation systems. An adaptive controller was developed and implemented to regulate the coordinated operation of booth robotic devices, which are enforced by the G-code corresponding to the target food structure, leading to the necessary resolution. This device was tested with different commercial food inks to develop structures with complex shapes. The workability of the developed printer was confirmed by examining the food samples obtained using multiple materials, including creating different three-dimensional structures of a single complex food ink and creating simple structures made of different food inks with diverse structures that could yield a synthetic tissue that reproduces synthetic meat.