Three dimensional printing has been used for food like chocolate and candy, but now three students in an additive manufacturing class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a delicious, innovative use for the printers. For an assignment in their class, the college students put together a system for printing ice cream into shapes.
Three dimensional printing has been used for food like chocolate and candy, but now three students in an additive manufacturing class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a delicious, innovative use for the printers.
For an assignment in their class, the college students put together a system for printing ice cream into shapes.
They used a Cuisinart soft serve ice cream maker, and a Solidoodle 3D printer to print the ice cream into a star shape.
In a process that takes fifteen minutes, the customized 3D printer, kept inside of a small freezer, extrudes the ice cream while liquid nitrogen is sprayed onto the object as its printing to maintain the desired shape.
Kristine Bunker, who worked on the project wrote: "We were inspired to design this printer because we wanted to make something fun with this up and coming technology in a way that we could grab the attention of kids."
They reportedly don’t have any plans to market the idea, but they did limit the amount of time that the machine takes to print a shape so that it could potentially be used commercially without too long of a wait time for customers.
