Chocolate 3D Printer, Cocoa Press, to Ship this Fall for $1,499. Pre-Orders Start in April.
All the best 3D printers print from foam plastic, either filament or resin. But an upcoming printer, the Cocoa Press, will use chocolate to create edible models. The brainchild of Maker and Battlebots competitor Ellie Weinstein, who has been working on iterating the printer since 2014, Cocoa Press will be available for pre-order starting her April 17th. cocoapress.com (opens in new tab) (The company is also known as Cocoa Press).
The Cocoa Press DIY kit starts at $1,499 and is expected to ship in September, while the fully assembled Professional package is $3,995 and will ship in early 2024. Remains at time of shipment. The company says it should take him 10 hours to assemble the DIY kit.
Cocoa Press has a build volume of 140 x 150 x 150 mm, which is small for a regular 3D printer, but more than enough for most chocolate creations. Unlike most plastic filaments that need to be heated from 200 degrees Celsius to 250 degrees, this printer only heats chocolate to 33 degrees Celsius (91.4 degrees Fahrenheit). This is slightly below body temperature. Beds are not heated.
Instead of rolls of filament or resin-filled tanks, the cocoa press uses 70-gram cartridges of special chocolate that solidifies at temperatures up to 26.67 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit). The cigar-shaped pieces of chocolate are not melted as they pass through the extruder (as in a typical FDM printer), but enter a metal syringe where they melt all at once.
In a recent video with YouTuber MandicReally, Weinstein showed how Cocoa Press works.
In this video, you can see Cocoa Press output several designs, including a chocolate fish with moving parts and a chocolate barrel. Weinstein’s Tik Tok channel has a video of the printer. output a vase (opens in new tab).
The printer is safe and hygienic. The chocolate only touches four parts of her, all of which can be easily removed (without tools) and cleaned in the sink. The Cocoa Press has an attractive orange, silver and black aesthetic reminiscent of the Prusa Mini+.
It uses an Ultimachine Archim2 32-bit processor with the same type of Marlin firmware found in most FDM printers. You can use standard 3D models created or downloaded from sites such as: printed matter (opens in new tab) again Syngeverse (opens in new tab) Slice with PrusaSlicer.
This is not the first printer released by Cocoa Press. Weinstein’s company sold her a larger, much more expensive model called the Version 5 “Chef” in 2020 for her $9,995, but she discontinued production of that one, now cheaper. We are focusing on small models. She said that anyone who purchased the old model would receive the new model for free.
If you want to learn more about Cocoa Press, Tom’s Hardware Pi Cast Ellie Weinstein will join us on March 14, 2023 to answer your questions.
