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Hello,

I work for a nutritional company and we need ingredient scoops of differing sizes, anywhere from 3ml to 30ml. We are wondering if there are any food-grade options for 3D printing. It seems after looking into PLA and ABS that neither are sufficient for our needs, but we could be wrong (since we’re novices at 3D printing!) Any information would be of great help.

Thank you,

Neal

3 Likes
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Hi Neal,

Colorfabb’s XT- Copolyester is FDA food-contact compliant. Is that good enough?

If not, I thik you’ll find something suitable from Taulman.

Cheers!

Andy

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Thank you for the reply, Andy. That is what we were looking for. Now, is it safe to assume that the majority of 3D printers can use this material to print, or are only certain printers able to handle this type of material?

Thanks!

Neal

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It is my understanding that it is not the toxicity of filament that is the concern, but more the surface finish. A food grade surface cannot be attained even with smoothing methods post print. If you go 100x magnification, you’d see pits and holes which offers a breeding ground for bacteria and cannot be sufficiently cleaned. The standard alternative to apply 3d printing to food safe products is to produce a 3D printed mould to make food safe silicone parts.

Hope that’s helpful.

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Taulman melts at a higher temperature, so you’re not going to want a printer that is lined with ptfe (teflon) for several reasons; you’re going to want an all-metal hotend. Most hotends have ptfe lining. First off it’s toxic, and at the taulman melting range you might be reaching the ptfe melting range. Even if you don’t reach the ptfe melting range you will be degrading the ptfe as you get near it, and the closer you get to it the more likely you’ll get clogs if you’ll be able to print at all.

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Well, there you go, Neal. All kinds of issues and opinions thrown up there! :slight_smile:

From my point-of-view, I’d be happy to use a 3D printed container for serving chips at a party. Probably not the dip and certainly not for cutlery and whatever the case, I wouldn’t expect to reuse any of it. As for what I’d be happy printing for a client, that’s a whole different picture.

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Thank you all for your help. It seems that regardless of the material or the printing process we will still run into the cleaning issue. Ideally we would want to reuse these scoops hundreds of times per week, but if we can’t clean them properly they will grow bacteria and eventually contaminate our ingredients, damn!

Well thanks everyone again. I am open to suggestions if anyone has any with regard to creating what we need! If anyone has any resources for creating silicon parts that would be great!

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I think there is too much worry about what is and is not food safe - the material, the process and the use do need to be considered - XT is styrene free and FDA for food contact (you can also put it in the dishwasher.)

Most printers use brass nozzles which CAN have a small amount of lead in them (2%) but wheather any of this would enter the product - and whether this would be for dry food use or not etc etc.

As to the porosity - well I eat of paper plates and wood spoons - unlikely i would re-use them, but if they are dry when I use them then they are unlikely to cause a problem. Most kitchen have wooden spoons that are washed at below sterile temps with washing up liquid.

So it depends what your actual requirements are. i would not necessarily implant PLA but i would happily eat off it! (once) and would use XT happily if it had been washed.

Some of the all metal hot ends might be steel - but you have to knowwhat has been fed through the nozzle first!

James

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oh, and you could print sample and then cast in a food safe silicone and plastic resin.

James

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Hey Neal,

There are some alternative filaments that are close to ‘Food Grade’ safe, such as Madesolid’s PET filament. PET being the material that plastic waterbottles are made out of. Here’s a link;

http://shop.madesolid.com/products/madesolid-strong-filament-1-75mm-1-lbs

The problem with ‘Food Grade’ safe and 3D printed objects is that bacteria can easily live in the non-smooth surfaces, making it dangerous. It would take a fair bit of finishing before the object would truely be food grade safe. Hope this was helpful.

Alex

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Try the RoVaPaste - $1000 on Kickstarter. I have printed Pizzas, Brownies, Pancakes, Icing & much more. The delivery system is Food Grade and ORD Solutions is working on CFA Approval. Shortly after that FDA Approval. It’s the only 3D Printer that I know which can handle Foodstuffs right out of the box.

https://twitter.com/cmoneyspruce/status/517825888327847936

https://twitter.com/cmoneyspruce/status/517824660596326401

I run ORD Printlab and I have printed tons of food with this product - we are currently working with CFA to get the approval on use with food.

Curtis

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There you go… an ORD printer could be used to produce ceramic slurry printed parts that would then need to be glazed and blasted in a furnace. Shapeways also has ceramics as a material choice, I had wondered if those parts qualify for food safe by FDA standards because glaze surface is used in cup, mugs, plates, bowls, etc. The examples at Maker Faire NY looked like items you would buy at Bed Bath and Beyond.

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Thanks AtomJaay,

I am actually putting ceramic through tomorrow and finding a facility to fire it here in Hamilton, ON. I can attempt to glaze it as well to see if it suits these purposes. Note that any process you take on in-house (such as firing your own ceramics) needs to be FDA or CFA approved for sale on its own - those are unavoidable standards. There will be specifics to your process that we can’t seek a general certification for. I can say, however, that we are applying to put the foods right into the printer and print directly onto food safe apparatus like parchment or stainless steel sheets. Feel free to message me at curtis.ingleton@geniusie.com for more details!

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Then again, you can always just print out of pla and coat it with a thick layer of food grade epoxy.

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Hey everyone,

So I ended up having our scoops printed using Veroclear material from Stratasys. Now I am thinking that I need to coat these scoops with an epoxy, but I’m not sure where to look. Can anyone provide suggestions as to the kind of epoxy/coating I should buy, and where I can find it?

Thanks!

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Hey everyone! Great question - a lot of people on the Pinshape community were also asking about how to make their prints food safe so we just published a blog article about this very subject. It seems to be highly debated but there are steps you can take to make your scoops more food safe. Here’s a few food safe sealants that we recommended in our blog article.

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Hi Neal, did any solution find your way? if not, we are working on a system for large scale 3D food printing with pastes. https://plus.google.com/+YaovandenHeerik/posts/cBKuEuQHUoF

We might be able to help you…

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Aloha from Hawaii! Did you ever get approval?