INTELLIGENT DESIGN

PRINTING CHOCOLATES YOU CAN EAT

01 August, 2011

We’ve been printing, on desktop printers that get handsomer by the year, full-fledged plastic machine parts for some years now. But edible stuff? Nah, the geeks said: too unwieldy, messy, complex, un-VFM. But not much longer: the University of Exeter, in collaboration with Brunel University and software developer Delcam, has developed a 3D chocolate printer that builds up, layer by layer, chocolates of any shape, size and complexity. It still needs polish for marketability, though—plus, chocolate is an iffy raw material: warmer or cooler than 34 °C and the end product will either be too soft and crumbly or too hard. Researchers hope that, eventually, online chocolatiers will allow users to upload their designs for customised 3D printing and delivery. Too expensive, then, for us Cadbury types.