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3D food printing—An innovative way of mass customization in food fabrication

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Many food forming or food structuring techniques the unique features of food printing .
are optimized for mass production. Customized foods 3D printing (3DP) is a digitally-controlled robotic
are currently designed and made by specially-trained construction process, which can build up complex
artisans using techniques, which may involve assem- solid forms layer by layer and apply phase transitions
bling the various prefabricated components to meet or chemical reactions to bind the layers together. Food
customers’ preferences. In general, the cost for pro- printing integrates 3DP and digital gastronomy tech-
ducing a limited number of customized pieces is sig- niques to manufacture food pieces with mass custo-
nificantly high. To achieve mass customization in an mization in shape, color, flavor, texture, and even nu-
economic way, we need an innovative method to de- tritional value. As a result, a digital 3D model of cus-
sign and fabricate customized foods. With the rapid tomized food designs can be directly transformed to a
development of online shopping and information finished product in a layered structure . Digital
[8]
technologies, food customization techniques are expe- gastronomy brings in cooking knowledge into food
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riencing a great revolution. Sloan has listed three fabrication so that our eating experiences can go
ways to customize food design: (i) create online beyond merely taste and cover all the aspects of ga-
virtual customized food by interactive interfaces and stronomy . 3D printing is not only a novel approach
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invite customers to share their design and personal to food fabrication, but also an economical and po-
experiences, such as donut design with varied shapes, werful technique for mass customization.
dough, filling, frosting, and topping, (ii) configure
online visual products for self-service and online order, 1.2 Overview
such as building your own pizza by Domino’s pizza’s
visual product configurator, and (iii) provide food A number of articles and papers pertaining to food
co-creation sites for gift giving with highly unique printing have been published over the past few years.
food products, such as choosing a chocolate base and Most of them have focused on fabricated, novel food
adding exotic toppings to customize chocolate bars. items. Recently, some researchers have started inves-
Three-dimensional (3D) food printing, also known tigating fundamental-level issues, such as converting
[4]
as Food Layered Manufacture (FLM) , can be one of alternative ingredients into tasty products for health
the potential alternatives to fabricate customized food and environmental reasons. However, such informa-
products. It integrates additive manufacturing and dig- tion is scattered in various publications with different
ital gastronomy techniques to produce 3D cus- technical focuses. The objective of this paper is to
tom-designed food objects without object-specific gather, analyze, categorize and summarize the availa-
tooling, molding or human intervention. Thus, this ble information pertaining to the technology and its
technique can increase production efficiency and re- impact on food processing. The rest of the paper is
duce manufacturing costs for mass customization in organized as follows: Section 2 discusses food printer
food fabrication. concepts and platform designs, as well as diverse
printing materials. Section 3 investigates the 3DP
1.1 Food Printing and Robotics-based Food Man- technologies for food printing from an engineering
ufacturing perspective, including dispensing and printing tech-
Cooking is one of the most important activities in our nologies, multi-material and multi-printhead, and
life. A robotic chef capable of following recipes would mixing techniques. Section 4 discusses the impact of
have many applications in both household and indus- food printing on customized food designs, persona-
trial environments. For example, cookie-baking robots lized nutrition, food supply chain, and food processing
can locate ingredients, mix them in the correct order, technologies. Finally, a conclusion is presented in
[5]
and place the resultant dough in a baking tray . These Section 5.
robots, equipped with operation/recipe libraries, can 2. Food Printer Concepts and Platform
perform basic tasks such as picking up an object, Designs
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putting it down or pouring . Such robotics-based
techniques are generally designed to replace manual “Food synthesizer,” a very primary food printer
processes in mass customization of food so as to re- concept, is described in the movie Star Trek: The
duce workload, save labor cost, and improve the effi- Original Series in the 1960s, a “replicating machine”
ciency of food manufacturing. Food manufacturers are that could synthesize meals based on user
satisfied with such progress, and they are not aware of requirements. The concept reveals people’s desire of

28 International Journal of Bioprinting (2015)–Volume 1, Issue 1