A Paste Extruder For Normal Printers

In the bright sunshine of a warm spring afternoon at Delft Maker Faire, were a row of 3D printers converted with paste extruders. They were the work of [Nedji Yusufova], and though while were being shown printing with biodegradable pastes made from waste materials, we were also interested in their potential to print using edible media.

The extruder follows a path set by similar ones we’ve seen before in that it uses a disposable syringe at its heart, this time in a laser-cut ply enclosure and a lead screw driven by a stepper motor. It’s part of a kit suitable for run-of-the-mill FDM printers that’s available for sale if you have the extra cash, but happily they’ve also made all the files available.

We’ve seen quite a few syringe extruders and at least one food printer, so there’s nothing particularly new about this one. What it does give you is a relatively straightforward build and a ready integration with some mass market printers you might be familiar with. Perhaps the most interesting part of this project isn’t even the extruder itself but the materials, after all having a paste extruder gives you the opportunity to experiment with new recipes. We like it.

17 thoughts on “A Paste Extruder For Normal Printers

    1. If so, then that’d be absolutely brilliant! 3d printed funnel cakes!

      If not, then I can picture a combined resin-and-paste printer, where the resin is actually hot oil. I anticipate absolute zero levelling issues at the oil/air interface 🤣

    1. Adding a one way valve to the side of the syringe, so that it could draw in additional paste when the plunger is retracted, could be a good improvement, negating the requirement to manually swap or refill the syringe part way through a long print.

      1. I’m curious why both this and Ellie’s awesome chocolate printer from last week use syringe-like systems that are batch-based. I think a screw/augur pressure mechanism should be able to extrude pretty precisely, as it’s used in other industries for forcing slurry or viscous liquids. I believe with some doubt that Saul Griffith’s original LEGO based chocolate printer from his 2001 master’s thesis used an archimedes screw to extrude with, and had a hopper where he could add more chocolate in chunk form as the printer ran.

  1. I’m not in the market for one of these but I love that they have put it up for sale *and* made it available for download. DIY is fun, but if I have a specific task in mind for the tool, I’m happy to pay for someone else to make the tool for me.

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