Researchers from the新加坡技术大学have developed a novel method of 3D printing milk-based desserts, that prevents them from being spoilt at room temperature.
Although extrusion-based techniques are now used to commercially fabricate foodstuffs, they often emit too much heat to allow their use with temperature-sensitive ingredients such as milk. Rather than changing the overall printing process to overcome this, the team found a way of adjusting the rheological makeup of powdered milk and created an edible new range of inks.
新加坡团队利用其基于乳制品的小说3D印刷材料，设法使各种烹饪的美食沙沙作响，从而提高了未来进一步美食创新的前景。
“We found that using a cold-extrusion method did not compromise the milk’s temperature-sensitive nutrients,” said Michinao Hashimoto, co-author of the study. “The technique offers vast potential in the 3D printing of aesthetically-pleasing, nutritionally-controlled foods which are customized for individual requirements.”
“This novel yet simple method can be used to formulate various nutritious foods, including those served to patients in hospitals for their special dietary needs.”
新兴的加性食品行业
Additive manufacturing is well-established within the industrial, automotive and aerospace sectors, but one of its lesser-known applications lies in the creation of enhanced, custom-designed foods. Leveraging 3D printing, it’s now possible to tailor a meal’s nutrients depending on the needs of those eating it, raising the prospect of foods that are tuned for sufferers of certain diseases.
Researchers from theUniversity of Technology Sydney(UTS) andDeakin Universityin Australia for instance, have3D printed meals that are safer to eatfor people with swallowing disorders (dysphagia). In recent years, additive techniques have also been used to produce a number of animal-free meats, such as重新定义肉’s fabricated steak, andLegendary Vish’s printed salmon.
往往extrusion-based印刷冰毒ods are used to create such fabricated foods, due to their low-cost, flexibility, and ability to dispense liquid-based food materials. The downside of extruding edibles is that FDM 3D printers can get very hot during operation, and this makes them incompatible with products that need to remain cold such as milk.
In order to protect milk’s temperature-sensitive nutrients, it’s possible to use cold-extrusion techniques instead, but these require the addition of food additives, which alter the rheological makeup of the liquid. Previous studies have shown that such additives can provide greater structural integrity to printed products, but judicious optimization is required to achieve a good level of printability.
To overcome the time-consuming drawbacks of additive-oriented approaches, the team proposed a new method, which extrudes customized food inks with tailored rheological properties, and without the use of additives.
The Singapore team’s milk-based food inks
为了使墨水能够证明3D打印食品的可用性，研究团队确定了两个关键因素：它需要表现出剪切的行为，并且必须在沉积后保持其形状。为了找到理想的墨水组成，团队开始创建具有各种流变学特性的墨水，并通过打印一系列类似网格的结构来对其进行测试。
Material mixtures ‘M70’ and ‘M75’ showed a high level of yield stress, which proved vital, as they were capable of being used to create solid structures, while other samples just dripped from the nozzle. A number of other parameters such as dispensing pressure, and nozzle velocity and diameter, also proved to be vital to print fidelity and showed that print settings remained a factor in culinary success.
团队继续通过制造每个人最喜欢的餐后餐，沙发，同样的两种混合物可以独自站立而不会变形，从而评估了他们的牛奶墨水。在他们最初的添加剂沙发测试成功之后，研究人员使用多形式的方法进行了实验，从而产生了一系列其他形状。
Leveraging a Direct Ink Writing (DIW) 3D printer, armed with syringes containing multiple food inks, the team printed the shapes, but this time containing different layers of chocolate, coconut, and syrup. In order to further test the abilities (and tastiness) of their technique, each level of the team’s fabricated dessert menu had a different texture too.
空隙被整合到一些结构中，以允许印刷巧克力填充物，研究人员墨水的两个最强变体仍然能够保持紧凑而无需添加剂。结果，团队认为他们的墨水是成功的，因为他们成功地开发了一种优化，更简单，更耗时的替代方案，用于在3D印刷食品中使用添加剂。
Disappointingly though, the team considered the future applications of their novel inks to lie in the medical sector rather than the food industry, meaning that they’ve likely printed their first and last ever chocolate sofa.
The researchers’ findings are detailed in their paper titled “3D printing of milk-based product,” which was published in the RSC Advances and co-authored by Cheng Pau Lee, Rahul Karyapp, and Michinao Hashimoto.
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Featured image shows the researchers’ 3D printed chocolate sofa. Photo via the RSC Advances journal.
