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Analysis of Pumpkin Paste Printability for Screw-Based 3D Food Printer

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Abstract

Extrusion-based 3D food printers are the most widely used 3D food-printing machines. Among these, screw-based 3D food printers have insufficient knowledge of printability compared to other types of extrusion-based printers. This study aimed to analyze the extrudability and shape stability immediately after printing from the viewpoint of mechanics using a screw-based 3D food printer. A paste comprising pumpkin flakes and water was used as the model food ink. The results show that 3D printing can be stable in the flake content of 20.0–28.6 wt%. When the pumpkin flake content was 18.2 wt% or lower, the 3D-printed food was flattened, and when the flake content was 30.8 wt% or higher, the paste was difficult to extrude from the nozzle. The results suggest that extrudability is mainly affected by the loss tangent of the paste and the balance between the apparent viscosity and inner nozzle pressure. Moreover, the main factors for shape stability immediately after printing were Young’s modulus and the balance between the stress applied to the printed food owing to its weight and the yield stress of the paste. Particularly, it was found that the screw-based 3D food printer has a unique characteristic in controlling extrudability compared to other extrusion-based printers because the inner nozzle pressure tends to fluctuate depending on the apparent paste viscosity. The findings of this study provide new fundamental insights into screw-based 3D food printers from viewpoints of fluid and structural mechanics.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during the current study are available in the manuscript and supplementary information.

Abbreviations

\(a\) :

Screw pitch (m)

\({D}_{n}\) :

Inner diameter of the nozzle (m)

\({D}_{s}\) :

Outer diameter of screw (m)

\({d}_{s}\) :

Outer diameter of screw shaft (m)

\(E\) :

Young’s modulus (Pa)

\(f\) :

Frequency (Hz)

\(G^{\prime}\)  :

Storage modulus (Pa)

\(G^{\prime}({\dot{\gamma }}_{E})\)  :

Storage modulus during extrusion (Pa)

\(G^{\prime\prime}\)  :

Loss modulus (Pa)

\(G^{\prime\prime}({\dot{\gamma }}_{E})\)  :

Loss modulus during extrusion (Pa)

\(g\) :

Acceleration due to gravity (m/s2)

\({H}_{n}\) :

Initial nozzle height (m)

\(\overline{h }\) :

Average height of 3D-printed food (m)

\({h}_{set}\) :

Set height of the 3D-printed food (m)

\({h}_{theo}\) :

Theoretical height of 3D-printed food (m)

\(K\) :

Consistency index (Pa·sn)

\({L}_{b}\) :

Bottom length of 3D-printed food (m)

\({L}_{b, set}\) :

Set bottom length of 3D-printed food (m)

\({L}_{t}\) :

Top length of the 3D-printed food (m)

\({L}_{t, set}\) :

Set-top length of the 3D-printed food (m)

\({L}_{b}/{L}_{t}\) :

Degree of flatness of 3D-printed food (-)

\({({L}_{b}/{L}_{t})}_{theo}\) :

Theoretical degree of flatness of 3D-printed food (-)

\({L}_{n}\) :

Nozzle length (m)

\(m\) :

Weight of 3D-printed food (kg)

\({m}_{p}\) :

Weight of pumpkin paste (kg)

\({m}_{w}\) :

Weight of purified water (kg)

\(n\) :

Power exponent (-)

\({P}_{atm}\) :

Atmospheric pressure (Pa)

\({P}_{n}\) :

Inner nozzle pressure (Pa)

\(\Delta P\) :

Differential pressure (Pa)

\(T\) :

Time required to print one 3D-printed food (s)

\(\mathrm{tan}\,\delta\)  :

Loss tangent (-)

\({\mathrm{tan}\,\delta }_{min}\)  :

Loss tangent in the region of sufficiently low strain (-)

\(\mathrm{tan}\,\delta ({\gamma }_{E})\)  :

Loss tangent during nozzle extrusion (-)

\(\overline{U }\) :

Average extrusion velocity (m/s)

\({U}_{max}\) :

Maximum extrusion velocity (m/s)

\({U}_{p}\) :

Printing speed (Stage movement speed) (m/s)

\({V}_{p}\) :

Volume of pumpkin paste (m3)

\(\gamma\) :

Strain (-)

\({\gamma }_{E}\) :

Strain during nozzle extrusion (-)

\(\dot{\gamma }\) :

Shear rate (s−1)

\({\dot{\gamma }}_{E}\) :

Shear rate during nozzle extrusion (s−1)

\(\eta\) :

Apparent viscosity (Pa·s)

\(\eta ({\dot{\gamma }}_{E})\) :

Apparent viscosity during nozzle extrusion (Pa)

\(\lambda\) :

Deformation amount of 3D-printed food (m)

\(\mu\) :

Viscosity coefficient (Pa·s)

\({\rho }_{b,p}\) :

Bulk density of pumpkin paste (kg/m3)

\({\rho }_{w}\) :

Density of purified water (kg/m3)

\({\sigma }_{p}\) :

Stress applied to the 3D-printed food owing to its weight (Pa)

\(\tau\) :

Shear stress (Pa)

\({\tau }_{0}\) :

Yield stress (Pa)

\(\omega\) :

Number of revolutions of screw (rad/s)

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Tomoko Sasaki (Institute of Food Research, NARO) for the use of the rheometer, Kunihiko Uemura (Institute of Food Research, NARO) for the use of the texture meter, and Hiroko Kambara and Rie Ito (Institute of Food Research, NARO) for their experimental support.

Funding

This work was supported by Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, Moonshot Research and Development Program for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (funding agency: Bio-oriented Technology Research Advancement Institution), Grant Number JPJ009237.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Food Research, NARO, 2-1-12 Kannondai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8642, Japan

    Takumi Umeda, Hiroyuki Kozu & Isao Kobayashi

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  1. Takumi Umeda
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  2. Hiroyuki Kozu
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Contributions

Takumi Umeda: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing – review & editing. Hiroyuki Kozu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data Curation, Writing – original draft. Isao Kobayashi: Conceptualization, Resources, Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Takumi Umeda and Hiroyuki Kozu contributed equally to this work and should be considered co-first authors.

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Correspondence to Isao Kobayashi.

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Umeda, T., Kozu, H. & Kobayashi, I. Analysis of Pumpkin Paste Printability for Screw-Based 3D Food Printer. Food Bioprocess Technol 17, 188–204 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11947-023-03116-y

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