For this weeks assignment I tried to 3d print using chocolate. I have used the Focus 3d food printer from a company called "byflow". The printer is a mobile printer inside a case which can be carried anywhere. It has different print heads which can be attached to wether print food or normal filliament.
First things first I would like to show how to attach a print head to the printer because I think that it is very innovative.
YOUTUBE LINK
and to remove the print head...
YOUTUBE LINK
Unfortenatly I had to open the case of the printer to repair one of the steppers, because it had a problem.
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the problem was a cable which was shorted because its isolation melted a little bit. After isolating all the cables the printer worked fine again. So I was able to home the machine pressing "Home XYZ".
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I wanted to try out different kinds of chocolate, so I started off using couverture. Couverture is for coating cakes, so it has a high proportion of fat and is more runny when melted.
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to add a gcode to the printer I had to create the gcode using slic3r, a free 3dprint software to create gcodes for any kind of 3dprinter.
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Just simply load the model into the software using the add button, after arranging the model simply press on Export g-code
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to load the gcode on the printer I had to first connect to the printer over wifi, when connected to the printer I can access the dashboard of the printer using its ip adress 192.168.0.1
On the starting screen I clicked on the next button
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Now I was able to load a gcode file clicking on "choose g-code file".
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with the file loaded I clicked on upload to send the file to the printer.
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When the upload was succesfull, I get a message from the website.
Note:When the upload is not sucessfull just retrying the upload will do the job.
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I was thinking that some sort of cooling, could lead to an better result. So I have designed a fan holder that I can attach to the print head, which kind of works like an typical printhead cooler.
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the test was not much of an success, even though it was not that bad. The chocolate was too runny so it kind of was a mess to deal with it.
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Next I tried typical bittersweet chocolate, it has ´less fat and is more stiff when melted.
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the result was very good in my opinion, it was still runny but the printer was able to create some sort of layer.
![](media/Bild17.12.jpg)