Chocolate Portion (Week 6)

Chocolate Delivery System

This week, nearly all of the parts has been delivered and we are able to create the chocolate deliver system. To the right is the apparatus containing the tank, a pressuring mechanism, and the delivery with the syringe. The syringe would be moved using the CNC machines to print out chocolate. Not pictured is a bike pump which would be used to add pressure to the tank, allowing chocolate to flow out.

Another important part of the project would be the actual chocolate that we are printing out. The challenging part of this is to get chocolate to be liquid inside the tank and solidifying rather quickly after being secreted. Since the tank is pressurized, the melting point of the chocolate is slightly lower than under normal conditions. This allows the chocolate to be in a liquid state in not-as-hot conditions. On the same coin, this might mean the chocolate can solidify easier after being under normal pressure. However, this pressurized effect might be negligible and a less hot chocolate solution might simply solidify in the tube leading up to the syringe.

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id=95Chocolate Recipe

We are playing around with a recipe containing chocolate and coconut oil. Coconut oil is a saturated fat, meaning it is solid in room temperature. Adding this to the chocolate would make it more readily to solidify. We draw this inspiration from Smucker's Magic Shell Chocolate. This is a chocolate syrup designed as an ice cream topping.

This chocolate, as can be read from the image, "freezes" in seconds, meaning it would harden really quickly on ice cream. However, we are going for a process that would allow the chocolate to harden even though the platform isn't ice cold. We are still testing out what is the most optimal ratio of coconut oil to chocolate.

Fix ups

At the same time, we are fixing the printing portion of the printer. The CNC machines would be replaced shortly, and we hope to fix the wiring that would not cause the motors to heat up quickly. Also, we are trying to create a better code for printing out chocolate things.