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Material Research: Sake + Sugar/Meringue Powder

Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2016 3:50 pm
by ezrec
Experimental powder, using the following recipe:

* Granulated sugar, 25lb
* Wilton's Meringue Powder, 8oz

Mix together, then pulse in a food processors (about 1lb at a time, or however much your food processor will hold) for approx 120 seconds total, until the powder is at a fine grain consistency.

For the ZCorp Z310+:

* Derive a new powder in ZPrint from the ZP-51 base powder
* Remove the roller scraper blade

Print at 0.2mm per layer.

Cure 'in bed' for at least 8 hours.

Make sure to *thoroughly* clean the roller after each print - it can get very sticky otherwise.

I highly recommend adding a dye to your binder (food coloring works well) so that it easier to determine where the surface boundaries are when depowdering.

NOTE: The a powder bed printer is typically _not_ a food-safe device, and the printed results should not be considered edible.

.. but they sure look cool, and sugar is a heck of a lot cheaper than ZP-150.

Re: Material Research: Sake + Sugar/Meringue Powder

Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 8:54 am
by dragonator
Seeing stuff like this makes me wish I had a working powder printer right now.

So the sugar to meringue powder ratio is 50:1? Why does the scraper need to be removed. What kind of problems does it give if you leave it on.

Does the part have any mechanical properties. Can you clean it with a brush after 8 hours in the bed or is it also too fragile for that. Is the bed heated? Added benefit of the materials is that it can be used in lost sugar casting. Only the meringue might give trouble since it does not melt but burn.

Also the binder would render the part non food-safe. It needs to go through the printhead, which is not food safe. There are food safe head available for some printers.

Re: Material Research: Sake + Sugar/Meringue Powder

Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 12:45 pm
by ezrec
The scraper needs to be removed because my grain size is 'fine sand', not 'talc powder'. So the scraper blade against the roller snags on sugar particles, and makes a terrible grinding noise.

The ZCorp ZCast powder (which is a larger grain size) has the same 'remove the scaper' requirement.

The part is brushable and compressed air cleanable after 6 hours, and increases in strength for about 24 hours thereafter. It can be infiltrated with wax - and sugar 'decomposes', it does not melt, in a casting process.

I ran dilute bleach through my binder system, and then flushed with sake (my binder) for a solid 100mm cube.

I've only ever run sake in my machine, and have replaced all the binder tubes, so it's as "food safe" as its going to get.

Re: Material Research: Sake + Sugar/Meringue Powder

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 9:59 pm
by ezrec
I've adjusted my sugar mix, and am getting much better results (and I don't have to remove the scraper):

This recipe spreads much more easily than the base powder, so you do not need to remove the scraper blade. However, the easily wetted powdered sugar requires that the saturation level of the derived powder must be lower to prevent bleed-through when spreading the new layer.
  • Granulated sugar, 25lb
    Wilton's Meringue Powder, 8oz
    Diamond 10-X Powdered Sugar, 64oz (super fine sugar powder + corn starch)
Mix together, then pulse in a food processors (about 1lb at a time, or however much your food processor will hold) for approx 120 seconds total, until the powder is at a fine grain consistency.
  • Derive a new powder in ZPrint from the ZP-15E base powder
    Set saturation to 80% for shell and core.
    Print at 0.2mm per layer.
    Cure 'in bed' for at least 8 hours before removal.
    Shell will be hard enough to handle air depowdering and manual brushing
    Core material will still be soft.
    Part will continue to harden for 48 hours (depending on temp & humidity)
    Shell will be hardened in about 12 hours
    Core material fully hardened after 48 hours
    Make sure to *thoroughly* clean the roller with a dry paper towel after each print.
I highly recommend adding a dye to your binder (food coloring works well) so that it easier to determine where the surface boundaries are when depowdering.

Re: Material Research: Sake + Sugar/Meringue Powder

Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 2:59 pm
by ezrec
Tried adding 96oz of maltodextrin to the mix.

I got much finer details, but the maltodextrin needs a much higher saturation that I was running - resulting parts were very 'dusty' and crumbled easily.

I'll continue to refine the process...

Re: Material Research: Sake + Sugar/Meringue Powder

Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 10:40 pm
by ezrec
.. and now the maltodextrin dust has crawled up inside my motors and jammed them.

Time for a teardown/rebuild of the Z310.

Re: Material Research: Sake + Sugar/Meringue Powder

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2016 11:53 am
by ezrec
Luckily, it only jammed the toothed pulleys, not the motors themselves.

Re: Material Research: Sake + Sugar/Meringue Powder

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2016 5:49 pm
by dragonator
Keeping busy I see. How did the powder jam the pulleys. Doe it somehow clump together?

Re: Material Research: Sake + Sugar/Meringue Powder

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2016 8:19 pm
by ezrec
The powder sticks to the grooves in the pulleys, and causes the belt to slip instead of be pulled by the pulley.

A toothpick and 5 minutes time cleared the problem right up.

Re: Material Research: Sake + Sugar/Meringue Powder

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2018 9:53 am
by bigbomber
what kind of edible binder do you use?
and how can you replace the ink of cartridge by the binder? can you please explain exactly?
I just add some water to the ink of cartridge, but after that, by rotating the cartridge downward, the ink start to drop from head of printer when it is off. also after a short period of printing time, the cartridge stop squirting the ink, while there is ink in the cartridge.