Help - 3D Printer for food manufacturing
Help - 3D Printer for food manufacturing
Hi,
I work as a continuous improvement engineer and I've been discussing getting a 3D Printer for our shop here. Main applications would be:
- Prototyping tools, jigs, parts, etc
- Small custom parts for use on equipment
The main thing I'm struggling with is there's so much technology and brands now! I decided to reach out for more insight. The main requirements are essentially:
- Food safe plastic OR Metal Detectable plastic (plastic with metal impregnated)
I would appreciate any help or direction!
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For a business, Prusa probably makes sense. You lose money when things don’t turn out right, so spending a bit more up front is the right choice.
Beware that FDM prints are full of tiny holes which are basically impossible to thoroughly clean, so they can be “food safe” for the first use, but once they’re used they may be dirty forever.
What's an option without tiny holes? I've heard of resin and laser printing which is higher resolutolion, do you know anything like that?
I'm the past there were hot ends (the print head) that may contain lead, so there is also that to consider.
The solution I read about in the past was to coat the part at the end with something food safe, like glazing for ceramics.
Of course you have to be careful about cleaning these plastics, PLA can't handle dishwasher temperatures.
For food processing, the entire part has to be food safe - in case it breaks and winds up in a bag of Cheetos or something
That makes sense, thank you for pointing it out! I can't see plastic 3D printed parts complying with that.
I've looked at formlabs list of materials and I've noticed there are some graded for those Temps and some not. I guess filaments themselves can always be changed
Coating is a good post processing solution however. So we'll be sure to look into that as well
Do you know any actual printers you could suggest? At least 30 cm x 30 cm by 30cm
You may want to look at the other reply to my post, they mentioned that a part that breaks should still be food safe. I don't work in the food industry, I'm just a 3D printer nerd, so I wouldn't know about things like that, I just wanted to make stuff for my own use.
I'm outdated as far as printer options, Prusa makes good printers without going into the really expensive enterprise tier, so that's where I would look.
I've sent a email to Prusa for more information. I really appreciate the insight
Parts breaking ending up in food is the biggest risk, but we run everything through metal detectors to try and prevent any risks
I think based on your comments and others we might go for Prusa options
There are metal-detectable filaments you can use, which may help (although I’m not sure if they’re food safe; presumably the suppliers will respond to business inquiries though!)
That size puts you in the “quite large” category, hah. One example that I know of (because I own one) is the Ender 5 Plus which comes in at 35x35x40cm build volume.
there's a wide range of solvents that you can use to smooth the surfaces with a "vapor bath" depending on you're material
Chances are very high that those plastics aren't food safe