Читать книгу 3D Printing of Foods - C. Anandharamakrishnan - Страница 12

Digital manufacturing involves the direct fabrication of objects without setting pre‐tools or workpiece requirements. Although the terms RP and AM are used synonymously, there was a distinct difference among them. RP refers to the process associated with the development of a prototype model, i.e. here the model processing is restricted till the pre‐production step that could not be used as functional working objects. Thus, the progressive transformation of RP leads to the AM processes that involve the actual production of functional workpieces from prototype models. Thus, AM allows RP to evolve into rapid manufacturing (RM) with more flexibility, work freedom, and exploitation of applications in developing a layered physical object. 3D printing was found to have vast potential applications of prototyping in several industrial sectors such as pharmaceuticals, automotive, space engineering, civil constructions, art, aviation, archaeology, cosmetics, and fashion industries (Rahman et al. 2018). Nevertheless, the most attractive application of 3D printing in food manufacturing is designing foods in a customized manner that leads to the development of the food fabrication process commonly referred to as food 3D printing. 3D printing of foods has a quite huge market potential as it aids in the mass customization, personalized diets, and sustainability practices than the traditional food manufacturing technologies (Derossi et al. 2019). Thus, 3D printing of foods referred to as food layer manufacturing (FLM) involves the sequential process of fabricating three‐dimensional edible constructs in a layer‐by‐layer manner with the capability of binding the adjacent layers through phase transitions or by chemical reactions (Nachal et al. 2019). A typical 3D printing process follows a series of well‐defined steps (Figure 1.2). First, it starts with scanning of real‐time objects or the creation of a 3D model using computer‐aided design (CAD) software. The shape and surface characteristics are stored in a unique STL file format that is native to 3D printing technology. Later the digital representation of the stored 3D object is transformed to the sliced information using a slicing software that translates the 3D model into computer‐generated codes (G and M codes). Based on which the movement arms and motors of 3D printers are controlled (Bechtold 2016). Thus, the whole printing process is controlled digitally using computers with minimal human interactions.

Figure 1.2 Workflow of 3D printing process.