3D Cream Printer for Cake Decoration 

Since its invention in the 1980s, 3D printing technology has evolved significantly to enable various new fabrication capabilities. In the last decade, the food industry has also started to adopt this technology for printing chocolates, candies, dough, or meat. 3D printing has amazing flexibility to realize customized designs with complex geometry, which makes it ideal for cake decoration. Moreover, 3D printers have become widely available as affordable consumer electronics. Therefore, to reduce human labor and skill requirements, we intend to repurpose a 3D printer for cake decoration, which has not been realized before.

 

The proposed system is designed to create the desired geometry with cream, produce multiple materials/colors and be affordable (hundreds of dollars). For the initial investigation, the prototype design is modified from a Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) 3D printer. The four primary subsystems include a 3-axis motion system, a material extruder, control algorithms, and an environment control chamber. At the current stage, the single nozzle cream extrusion capability is completed for the 3D cream printer. Coordinated control of the Ender 3 Pro 3-axis motion system and the custom nozzle has been realized for cream printing. We are currently investigating the effects of temperature and other printing parameters for various potential cream mixtures to identify the configurations suitable for printing. The multi-material printing capability will be developed after identifying suitable materials. With the 3D cream printer, we hope to empower novice baking hobbyists to create amazing cake decorations without years of practice.