This High School Student Designed and Built the Most Capable Chocolate 3D Printer We’ve Seen

3D printing has always carried with it the very important question of what materials are best suited to the technology. Early stereolithography 3D printers from the ’80s required unique photopolymer resins which solidify when exposed to the intense light from a source like a laser. But, in the decades since 3D printing was invented, it’s become obvious that the optimal material is dependent on the application.

If that application is confectionary delights, then the best material is quite obviously chocolate. But, 3D printing chocolate is actually pretty tricky. It melts very easily, and doesn’t solidify quickly. That means that special extrusion and cooling techniques are required to print it successfully—something that hasn’t quite been achieved until now.

Luckily, Eliana Weinstein spent 3 years working on his Cocoa Press design, and the results are the best we’ve seen. Weinstein starting working on the printer when she was a senior in high school for an engineering class. It melts Hershey bars, and extrudes them using a syringe-style mechanism that Weinstein designed and machined herself.

Unlike traditional thermoplastic 3D printers which use often use heated beds to slow cooling, the Cocoa Press needed active cooling to solidify the chocolate as quickly as possible. That was accomplished using 6 thermoelectric Peltier coolers. While Weinstein is still working on improving cooling, these were enough to achieve some nice results.