Anyone have any experience with 3D printers in their cake decorating?

AI'm a hobbyist baker, but my full tine job is making jewellery. I used CAD/CAM all the tine in my jewellery work. You can upload models or buy per designed models from Shapeways. Just be aware that the only material that's food safe at the moment is ceramic. You might be able to order something in plastic or metal and then spray it with an edible lacquer to create a barrier. If you go through with this please let us know how it turns out :)

OooOOoo I've thought about that! How cool would it be to print 3d cake decorations! You KNOW it's coming.

A

This would be amazing and come in handy so much!

I want the 3D printer for sculpted cakes.  It would help me make the templates for carving cake.

AThey already have machines that can handle basic icing, it will be interesting to see what happens in the next 5-10 years:

AThere's a company called The Sugar Lab, based in LA, who do edible 3D printing. I read a NIB about them earlier this year. I'll see if I can find a link, I posted it on my FB page.

AHere's the article: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/30/3d-printing-sugar-icing-cake

AI've been looking into it and it's not cheap. The printers are affordable, but the printing materials can be very pricey. Of course it depends on your purpose and how durable you need what you're printing to be. Costs for the printers may keep coming down, but the material, not so much

AMaterial is still expensive because 3D printing is still a very small niche. If 3D printers follow the price/performance trajectory of technology products in general you will be able to buy them for $99 within 10 years. At this point market penetration will explode once killer apps are identified and substrate blocks of various types (some edible) will be priced similarly to today's inkjet cartridges. Eventually certain basic types of substrate could even be created at home or at centralized processing centers by recycling plastic containers.

Hi everyone!

Thanks for all your responses and for welcoming me to your community forum. 

We are a team of MBA students from San Francisco State University working on a semester-long project involving the "3D printing industry." We wanted to find other industries, such as the "cake making/cake decorating" industry, that may be a good candidates to adopt the technology. We have developed a short survey to gather data for industries such as yours. If you have a few minutes, please complete the survey. It will be greatly appreciated. Below is a link to our survey. Thanks in advance!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1SCdO6HN2erfL2PGoYDoKHhKQmO_RXmSoVP3hLEf-reY/viewform

I see alot of people using them on Etsy to make cookie cutters right now. I think that would be great to be able to print a cutter if I needed a special one.

AIt would be cheaper to make your own cookie cutter the traditional way (metal smithing). 3D printing is awesome but it's expensive (you need the software, time to learn the software, plus the cost per print is pretty high). Also, most printed objects have stepping lines on them, unless you go hi resolution printing which is even more expensive! I've made custom cookie cutters for about $20 (materials + labour when I've been commissioned to make them).

I'm working on a website for hobbyist and semi pro jeweler a at the moment and doing lots of tutorials. If you guys would find it helpful I can make a tutorial for making custom cookie cutters.just let me know if there are any shapes/in ages your after.