Africa’s Octo-Choco-Printer

By on December 31st, 2013 in Usage

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We’ve heard about chocolate 3D printers before, but never one like this. Fouche Chocolates of South Africa, and specifically its engineer Hans Fouche has developed an eight-nozzle chocolate printer for producing custom delicacies. 
 
A detailed report on htxt.africa takes you through Fouche’s development process, which explains how the printer is used to create “edible name plates” and custom-lettered chocolate bars. 
 
Fouche will also produce custom designed large chocolate sculptures if asked. However, there are challenges: 
 
A lot of the designs were very ambitious. It was only through our experience with 3D printing chocolate that we were able to help the artists to realise what is actually possible. The best are always simple and not over complicated, because chocolate is difficult to work with, it does not support itself very well.
 
But here’s something even more interesting:  
 
His most impressive achievement, however, is a giant RepRap 3D printer which stands well over two meters tall and takes up most of his garage. Originally designed for making giant, one off chocolate sculptures, Fouche retired it as the economics of using it to make sweets didn’t work out.
 
And the extra calories, too, we suspect. 
 

By Kerry Stevenson

Kerry Stevenson, aka "General Fabb" has written over 8,000 stories on 3D printing at Fabbaloo since he launched the venture in 2007, with an intention to promote and grow the incredible technology of 3D printing across the world. So far, it seems to be working!