A little over two years ago, Japanese startup Open Meals caught media attention when it showcased its patent-pending “Pixel Food Printer.” The prototype could 3D print various types of food, especially sushi—one of the best-known Japanese foods around the world.
The 8-bit gel pixelated sushi was not exactly a gastronomist’s delight, nor did it even come anywhere close to Jiro Ono’s famed sushi. What mattered was that the sushi demoed at South by Southwest (SXSW) 2018 was edible.
Open Meals exhibited a refined concept at SXSW 2019. To sample the food, however, users had to first provide a sample of their saliva, urine or stool for the 3D printer to determine any deficiencies in their diets and print a customized sushi accordingly. That year, the company also announced that it would launch a restaurant christened Sushi Singularity in Tokyo in 2020.
Going by the video on the company’s website, biometrics come into play when a customer walks into the restaurant. The customer’s face is mapped while his or her levels of nutrients, DNA and sleep quality, among other things, are captured by a computer. A 3D printer with robotic arms then makes the sushi, and a sushi chef simply applies soy sauce to the personalized 3D-printed sushi cube before handing it to the customer.
Where Do We Stand Now?
3D food printing has been around for nearly 15 years. The Fab@Home project, which was shut down in 2012 once the Cornell University project’s goal was achieved, was the first multi-material 3D printer to print food materials such as chocolate, cookie dough and cheese way back in 2006. Six years later, Choc Edge became the first commercially available 3D chocolate printer.
In May 2013, NASA awarded a six month, $125,000 grant to Systems & Materials Research Corporation (SMRC) to develop a fully functional food 3D printer for long space voyages.
Anjan Contractor, who was then a senior mechanical engineer at SMRC, went on to found a NASA-funded 3D food printing company called BeeHex. The startup has a 3D food printing “robot” called Chef3D. The filaments, which comprise dough, tomato sauce and melted cheese, are dispensed through the printer’s nozzle. BeeHex 3D pizza printers are self-cleaning.
While still considered to be in its infancy, the 3D food printer market is growing at a fast clip. The global edible 3D printing market is expected to surge with a CAGR of 32.05 percent to achieve a market size of $484 million by 2025—up from $91 million in 2019, according to Research and Markets.
The increasing world population and the need to fulfill its growing food demand along with changing lifestyle conditions will provide an opportunity to boost the growth of the global edible 3D printing market in the forecast period.
The major application lies in the making of 3D-printed chocolates, candies, 3D-printed sugar and even gluten-free 3D-printed food, among other food items, according to the research firm. Major 3D printing companies are geographically placed in North America and Europe, even as the Asia Pacific region (especially India and China) is expected to be the fastest-growing region during the forecast period due to its large consumer base.
Companies in the 3D food printing segment include: 3D Systems, Katjes Magic Candy Factory, The Hershey Company, BeeHex, byFlow, Print2Taste GmbH, Upprinting Food, Choc Edge, TNO, Natural Machines, Biozoon Food Innovations GmbH, NuFood LLC, Crafty Machines Ltd., and Barilla S.p.A.
Imagination Drives Applications
There are many reasons to explain why this market is growing. First, rising consumer demand for customized and personalized food products is boosting the demand for such 3D printers. Second, textures with features such as crispy inclusions, soft centers and extra-crunchy toppings are important drivers of the perception of taste for many food products. Hence, brands are continuously innovating in this space.
3D food printers available in the market are also capable of regulating preservatives, chemicals and additives according to need, resulting in healthy foods.
For instance, the microwave pancakes you will find stocked in malls in the Netherlands are 3D printed. Italy-based 3D printing company WASP makes gluten-free products of foods such as pastries in the shape of gnomes. 3D Systems’ ChefJet crystalizes thin layers of fine-grained sugar into different geometric shapes.
Dedicated 3D food printers use fresh ingredients, so they are safe to eat as well as tasty. As an example, Germany-based Biozoon has developed a 3D food printer to transform fresh food materials into a puree (cooked food such as a vegetable or fruit that has been put through a sieve, blender, or the like) known as “smoothfood.” The puree targets those with medical conditions who find it difficult to consume whole foods.
It can be used by elderly people who are taking a medication and find it difficult to chew and swallow. The company uses its so-called smoothfood silicone molds to bring the pureed or pasted food back into a visually appealing, authentic form that is also recognizable for people with dementia.
Netherlands-based Upprinting Food takes unwanted and discarded food and uses it to create paste filament that in turn is used to make snacks. “We started printing with food, using products that normally go to waste. With the 3D printer, we can really create something beautiful and unique, creating value to those normally wasted products,” said Elzelinde van Doleweerd, creative director and founder of Upprinting Food.
The company prints mostly with fruit, vegetables and old bread. For its recipes, the company uses products that often go to waste because “they are not beautiful enough, or too ripe, but still fine to eat.” After printing, the foods are mostly baked and dried for a long shelf-life. “We deliver support to chefs, so they can print themselves from their own residues. Most chefs know what’s still good to eat and they are creative enough to make something tasty. With our support, they can turn it into personal shapes and a unique experience,” said Doleweerd.
For its part, Natural Machines prefers to call its 3D food printer “Foodini”—a kitchen appliance. The Foodini Creator software can help customize prints so that you don’t need to upload files. However, you can upload files like JPEGs and other image formats, and even upload and use STL files for 3D models.
Foodini ships with empty food capsules. The company recommends 3D printing commonly used packaged foods that, if made by hand, would require forming, shaping, or layering. Natural Machines adds that 3D food printers excel at making foods that range from simple pretzels or breadsticks to ravioli. The different nozzle sizes for the capsules allow for printing with different types of food textures.
Foodini also allows for printing different shapes. For instance, you can load the dough and filling into Foodini, after which it will automatically print the ravioli. Foodini, however, does not cook or bake as yet. You will need an oven to bake the ravioli.
How 3D Food Printers Work
The technology for 3D food printers is similar to typical 3D printing, except that the material here is food. 3D printing technology enables the layer-by-layer manufacturing of such structures—be they crispy or soft gels. Users thus have the opportunity to create their own food 3D models with special CAD software. However, they can also directly download any 3D model on dedicated STL file websites such as 3D Warehouse, GrabCAD, STL Finder or Thingverse—many of which are free search engines, marketplaces or repositories.
The market is broadly classified into extrusion-based printing, selective laser sintering, binder jetting, and inkjet printing. That said, a majority of 3D food printers use extrusion 3D printing technology, similar to regular desktop fused filament fabrication (FFF, trademarked as Fused Deposition Modeling or FDM by Stratasys) 3D printers. Instead of using plastic material, though, food 3D printers use pureed or food paste ingredients.
The most common ingredients are chocolates and confectionery, pancake batter and cream, but there are machines that make pizzas, artificial meat and other exotic products too. The food products are 3D printed layer by layer, generally through a syringe-like extruder.
Users can choose from databases of recipes, and insert a cartridge with the ingredients into their 3D printer at home. They can also create a personalized dish by including or excluding certain nutrients.
Upprinting Foods initially used a standard 3D printer with an adjusted print head. “You need to extrude a puree instead of melting a wire, so you need to add a tube with puree and a motor to put pressure on it, but the axis are working the same way,” company founder Doleweerd noted. In terms of challenges, you have to adjust your slicer to the material and the shape you are using, which can sometimes be a challenge when you come up with a new puree.
UK-based Choc Edge Ltd provides 3D chocolate printing solutions to businesses and individuals who wish to design and produce creative chocolates. 3D chocolate printing is similar to 3D plastic printing, which itself is based on traditional coordinate system technology. Instead of printing in plastic, the Choc Creator V2.0 Plus model enables users to print drawings and miniature objects in chocolate.
First, the chocolate is tempered. It is then loaded into a specially designed syringe, and deposited into a 2D cross-section on a substrate—akin to printing a 2D image onto paper. The syringe is then raised by the height of the chocolate line that is being printed and the process repeats layer by layer to form 2D, 2.5D and 3D chocolate products that are defined by a 3D computer design. Any 3D design program capable of exporting STL files is able to create designs that can be printed with the Choc Creator.
The 3D model is then converted into an instruction code for the Choc Creator V2.0 Plus to read. The code is generated by a computer program called a “slicer,” which slices a 3D model into layers and writes the printing instructions for each of these layers. Once the code is ready, it can be loaded into the Choc Creator V2.0 Plus and the object gets printed layer by layer. Although the slicer will automatically generate the code, the 3D model must be manually designed using CAD software.
Consistent Innovation Holds the Key
Consider this case. The hot-melt extrusion method is widely used in 3D-printed chocolates, where the chocolate is required to be between the temperatures of 31°C to 36°C so that it can be melted and dispensed accordingly. Cold extrusion does not require the manipulation of temperature as it depends solely on the rheology (describes and assesses the deformation and flow behavior of materials) of printing ink that is added to chocolate at the operating temperature.
Researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design’s (SUTD) Soft Fluidics Lab have developed an approach called “Chocolate-based Ink 3D Printing” (Ci3DP) to print chocolate-based inks at room temperature by cold extrusion.
“Ci3DP is capable of fabricating customized food in a wide range of materials with tailored textures and optimized nutritional content. This new approach also widens the industry’s capabilities in 3D food printing, allowing for the cold-extrusion of food products that are temperature-sensitive,” said Michinao Hashimoto, principal investigator and assistant professor at SUTD.
3D-printed food also offers a host of options for those who don’t eat meat. Jerusalem-based Future Meat Technologies, for instance, uses cell-based or cultivated fillings for the cartridges to 3D print meats. Cultivated meats are grown and harvested in labs using cells extracted from the animal.
Spanish food tech startup Novameat has developed vegan-friendly 3D-printed “meat” using plant-based proteins. The company debuted the world’s first 3D-printed plant-based steak, and it has since managed to expand and print vegan chicken and fish fillets.
Redefine Meat is developing a solution that combines a proprietary semi-industrial 3D digital printing platform, a 3D meat modeling system, and plant-based food formulations. Founded in 2018, Redefine Meat has developed a patent-pending technology that replicates the texture, flavor, and eating experience of beef and other high-value meat products.
In October 2019, Russian cosmonauts on the International Space Station announced that they had printed meat in space for the first time. An Israeli food-tech startup Aleph Farms loaded a spacecraft with vials of cow cells a month earlier.
When the cells arrived at the space station, cosmonauts fed them into a 3D printer to produce thin steaks—a sign that meat could be grown in harsh environments on Earth, according to a Business Insider report .
For its part, San Francisco-based AlgaVia uses microalgae to develop protein powder with the aim of delivering nonallergic, gluten-free food that is a high source of dietary fiber.
TNO, a printer manufacturing company, and Barilla, an Italian pasta manufacturing company, collaborated to develop a printer that is capable of printing pasta in varied shapes and allows their customers to print their own pasta with CAD files based on their choice of design, according to a report by Orion Market Research .
The military envisions using 3D printing to customize meals for soldiers that taste good, are nutrient dense, and could be tailored to a soldier’s particular needs.
A Peek into the Future of Food
UK-based Food Ink describes itself as a “one-of-a-kind gourmet experience in which all the food, all the utensils and all the furniture are completely produced through 3D printing in an immersive futuristic space.” The byFlow printer creates edible 3D-printed biodegradable dishes.
In the near future, Open Meals wants its sushi to connect with people around the world so that they can create, edit and share their own sushi online.
The Pixel Food Printer will use information from its Food Base—its so-called “digital food platform” that it likens to music distribution databases like iTunes.
By the end of this century, Open Meals believes it will be possible to upload, search, download and share or distribute food data, and link it to a food printer to eat anything you want in any part of the world.
Meanwhile, 3D food printing is already picking up speed. BeeHex’s Chef3D reportedly prints a pizza in only a minute. Of course, it takes another five minutes to cook the pizza. However, it’s only a matter of time until baking and cooking is integrated with 3D food printers.
Further, the prices of these printers are dropping. While prices can depend on the food 3D printer’s build volume and/or on the variety of 3D printable ingredients it is compatible with, the average price of 3D food printers typically ranges between $1,000 and $5,000, according to Aniwaa Pte. Ltd.
In general, the minimum price for a food 3D printer is around $1,000 (although the PancakeBot is available for under $400), Aniwaa notes. However, prices may decrease in the future, just as they have for regular extrusion (FFF/FDM) 3D printers.
That said, those who remain skeptical about the taste of food created by 3D food printers will do well to remember that all the processed food we eat is made by machines. Besides, our blenders and food processors are machines too. With taste being subjective, a 3D food printer may be worth a try.