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!
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;
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?
Hey everyone! Great question - a lot of people on the Pinshape 2 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 21 that we recommended in our blog article 8.
