The development of 3D food printer for printing fibrous meat materials

In this study, 3-D food printer was developed by integrating 3D printing technology with fibrous meat materials. With the help of computer-aided design and computer animation modeling software, users can model a desired pattern or shape, and then divide the model into layer-based sections. As the 3D food printer reads the design profile, food materials are extruded gradually through the nozzle to form the desired shape layer by layer. With the design of multiple nozzles, a wide variety of meat materials can be printed on the same product without the mixing of flavors. The technology can also extract the nutrients from the meat material to the food surface, allowing the freshness and sweetness of food to be tasted immediately upon eating it. This will also help the elderly's eating experience since they often have bad teeth and poor taste sensing problems. Here, meat protein energy-type printing is used to solve the problem of currently available powder slurry calorie-type starch printing. The results show the novel technology development which uses pressurized tank with soft piping for material transport will improve the solid-liquid separation problem of fibrous meat material. In addition, the technology also allows amino acids from meat proteins as well as ketone body molecular substances from fatty acids to be substantially released, making ketogenic diet to be easier to accomplish. Moreover, time and volume controlled material feeding is made available by peristaltic pump to produce different food patterns and shapes with food materials of different viscosities, allowing food to be more eye-catching.