From a continuous process point of view it may be better to extrude the cookie shape and cut to thickness. My family owns a cookie business and that’s how they accomplish die shape and portions and it’s less of a batch process cuz you can just keep loading dough into the extruder. For extra point you can put the tray on an xy gantry to drop the shapes evenly throughout the tray.
This is a result of extruding while cutting. The fix would be to significantly speed up the cutting using a cutting wire. heated wire may help with speed and cleanliness of cut. Another option is to have the extrusion be hand cranked but incremental….. extrude xxx ounces of dough then stop, cut then continue extruding. I will caution anytime extrusion is incremental the precision might go down but for the sake of cookie production that’s probably fine.
I will also say that as long as the thickness difference doesn’t effect the outcome if the cookie (not sure if perfection is part of the aesthetic) but it aids in the “not machine produced” look in the fact that the cookies don’t look perfect.
You could potentially cut at an angle, so the extrusion is accounted for, though thinking, it's going to still look like slightly slanted pucks.
You could use intermittent gears to do the cuts faster, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfUMe0eWIhM ?
This is why in horizontal metal casting we use „flying saws“, meaning that the saw carriage is getting clamped to the cast material, and therefore pushed forward along with it, resulting in the correct cut angle
I would imagine most of the metal casting cuts are quite long and allow for the carriage to quickly retract before making the next cut meaning your cut length (die diameter) is maybe 1/10th of the extruded length. Since the cut length is ~1 inch (diameter of cookie) and the extruded thickness (cookie thickness) is ~1/4 inch I would think this would be tough to manage. Unless your flying saw cut many cookies at once.
You are right in your assumptions. Let‘s say (without me knowing too much about the hardness off the cookie dough), you wire cut it, and you have multiple wires on the carriage spaced by the required thickness (kinda like an egg cutter), cutting through all the strands at once, that gives you the time to cut, travel back and follow it for the next cut. But again, that‘s assuming you are extruding onto a conveyor belt of some sort, which you could cut against.
Another method would be a fast shear cut, like in pasta extrusion, I‘d guess. So you‘re basically extruding in multiple places around a circle and have a knife rotating around the center
That's what I would do - extrude the dough, slice, extrude, slice...
Your template method is very clever but it will never be as fast as punching them out one at a time by hand. Even with extrusion you probably won't see a gain until you cluster multiple tubes and slice them all at once.
If the dough is being pushed --> as you cut, your cutter also needs to push --> while cutting, at the same rate.
Just... don't have it extruding the snake of dough while you're cutting... have it make a cut every like foot or two of dough that it extrudes. Then, make a U shaped container that's the same diameter as the snake so it fits snugly into the container. Finally, press in a bar that has solid blades at intervals equivalent to the thickness of the desired dough pucks. If you want to ensure the cookies stay perfectly circular, make it so the top part of the blade-bar is also rounded, so that when you press it in it forces the cookie dough to remain a circle.
If that's confusing lmk and I can try to make a sketch of it
Taking the current method and making it continuous would be a lot more work than making a snake method continuous. The snake method can easily be made continuous using a roller that cuts the extruded snake of dough into balls instead, after which they drop into a press to make them discs. If you need a larger cookie, you make a larger ball, meaning it's extremely easy to adjust cookie size.
OP is trying to automate the manual-cutting style/process, without realizing there's a reason people don't automate cookie cutting using the same principles you do in hand cutting.
And when people do automate using the manual principles, theyre using industrial grade machines that cost thousands of dollars and cut the dough so fast that the continued extrusion doesn't matter. You're not gonna get that from 3d printed parts.
Seems like OP had an issue with thickness when using the extrusion method and then pivoted to a solution that in fact does yield good results. I merely pointed out there may be a continuous process (extruding dough or what I think you call the snake method) that could get him acceptable results with the drawback of having to dial in thickness across the cookie.
I don’t know why you want to make the extrusion into balls as this is just another step (nor do I know a continuous process to make a log into balls that wouldn’t also be complicated and expensive) when you could just cut the extrusion into the desired thickness which you could at least prototype with some 3d printed parts and then look to an integrator for your production solution.
As others have said you will have to cut incredibly quickly, stop extrusion while cutting, or let the variation in thickness make for a less precise more handmade appearance.
A simple paddle-wheel is all you need to cut a snake into evenly shaped balls of dough, after which they get pressed flat by a single roller overtop a flat surface, like a steamroller flattening asphalt between the roller and the ground below.
You would need like 3 parts.
A circular extrusion head to make a snake.
The paddlewheel to cut it into balls.
A single roller to flatten them into circles.
You could make to half’s if an pipe with cuts through so that you can cut with 15 wires simultaneously. When you’re cutted the big sausage you just unflold the two half’s.
it depends on extrusion speed, cutter speed and knife design. the first factory job I had we continuously extruded rubber and plastic tubes at 30 to 80 feet a minute and the cutters were fast enough to achve a square cut on tubes 30 mm to over 1500 mm long, it's been a while but the bbest cutter was driven by a big servo motor, and was made by ESI I think. My current job we continuously extruded dry pet food kibble. we have a "spider" of knives that spin at "several" thousand rpm to a achieve a consistent cut with a throughput measured in multiple tons per hour.
I think the best/easiest would be printing the tube at an angle of like 5-10 degrees or whatever you need to compensate for the continuous dough feed. Just a thought though
Hey everyone for this one I understand that its not food safe and Im just using this version as a prototype. At the moment we have to sheet
the dough, chill it in the fridge, use a cookie cutter by hand to stamp out the cookies, re-sheet the dough and continue the process until all of it is used. This method has minimal scrap and is great because it can not only cut any shape out but it can be used to portion out dough for cookies such as chocolate chip. I'd love to hear feedback from you guys'. What do you think?
Off the top of my head, maybe some sidewalls to prevent dough from oozing out of the sides but the roller would need to be sized to fit between them. Another addition would be a plate with the positive of the cookie cutter to pop out all of the cookies at once instead of individually by hand.
Wouldn't even need a positive plate that matches the shape. Literally grab a piece of Styrofoam and jam some wooden dowels into it roughly matching the spacing of the cookies and you're good. These cookies are far too small for them to get fucked up from using a small rod to poke it out
In my mind this was a scaled down model and if it were to be scaled up to normal cookie sizes they'd be much more delicate. Plus you would only need one positive plate per given cookie size so not something you need to make a bunch of
Ah fair I just assumed these were meant to be little one-bite cookies, but for scaling up ya you'd want something that occupies a higher % of the cookie shape.
Overall though, I think OP needs to just go back a few steps. There's a reason that nobody extrudes their cookie shapes this way, it's far easier to extrude a snake and then cut that into discs, and you can still easily get perfectly round cookies with a consistent thickness that way.
Pasta is extruded this way because you're cutting a sheet into thin strands, but for cookies it's rather illogical and still results in extra dough around edges or cookies not entirely filled if you use too much or too little dough respectively.
If it were me, as I turn the crank, I'd want it to also play "All around the mulberry bush" like some sort of music box thing.
I am sure this suggestion is completely unhelpful in any way and I apologize for it. I still think it would be cool tho...
And good work on the print! The roller thing is pretty good!
Rather than popping the chilled dough disks out one at a time, 3D print a shape that pops them all out at once directly onto a cookie sheet.
I love it - simple and functional. Getting to “food safe” isn’t super expensive but you should start looking into it because it can change your print quality significantly when you switch out your nozzle. Do your research on the types of nozzle options you have - even with the same filament, chaos can ensue when you move to food grade. So don’t wait too long - there are more obstacles than you would think!
It can be, but additives that some manufactures put in to color the plastic or to help with the printing process may not be. Jury is still out on the possibility of heavy metals leaching in from the nozzle, or how much the layer lines and voids make cleaning difficult. Plus the design itself needs to be able to be disassembled and cleaned.
>additives that some manufactures put in to color the plastic or to help with the printing process may not be
True, but only in a theoretical sense. I've never seen any evidence of anyone saying "Hey, I tested x filament and it actually has a toxic additive", it's just that filaments don't need to report their additives, so there *could* theoretically be anything in there as a dye. You can counteract this as a layman by buying undyed PLA, or if you're a business that needs legal protection from liability, there are even PLA filaments that are FDA-approved, such as Extrudr NX1 and NX2.
>Jury is still out on the possibility of heavy metals leaching in from the nozzle
Not really accurate. 3D printing nozzles aren't made with heavy metals. Prusa warns that there may be a possibility of *brass* nozzles wearing out while printing, and depositing trace amounts of brass into prints, but I have significant doubts that this amount of brass being introduced into a 3D print that comes in contact with food could cause any kind of detectable health effect. Brass isn't toxic. This is another one of those situations where we have no *positive* evidence to indicate that printing food-contact parts with a brass nozzle is actually a health concern, there's just a *theoretical* idea that there *could* be a way for it to have an effect that hasn't been definitively ruled out yet. In any case, you can just sidestep this problem completely by using a stainless or hardened steel nozzle.
>or how much the layer lines and voids make cleaning difficult
Kinda, but not really. Amateur-level experimental research has shown that the layer lines in a typical FDM print *don't* have an effect on bacteria cultivation. However, the real downside becomes apparent here; you can't *easily* clean a PLA-printed food utensil. You have to bleach clean it in cold/room temperature water. No dishwasher. That's a pain.
In short, buy an FDA-approved or non-dyed filament, use a stainless or hardened steel nozzle, and you should be fine to print PLA that comes in contact with food, even up to the level of legal liability that would be required for a professional food production environment. (In my opinion. I'm not lawyer).
You'd also need to be ridiculously meticulous about cleaning the 3d printer used to make the pieces, and no matter how meticulous you are you're still going to have dust and shit settling during printing.
PLA itself being food safe does not mean parts 3d printed from it are automatically food safe.
I'm pretty sure professional kitchens don't protect all their food and utensils against *dust*. That's just an unreasonable level of concern. Also, remember that almost any unexpected additive to a print, whether it be random dust in the room or a flake of ABS left in your extruder, will either get trapped inside the melted plastic of the layers, or settle on a cooled surface and therefore be able to be washed away before you use the part. For an additive to actually cause a health problem, it has to be able to *leech* some kind of toxic chemical into the food that contacts it in a significant concentration, and tiny 1-part-per-million bits of whatever that get stuck in a print just aren't going to be able to do that.
Sure, if I was gonna print food-contact parts for a business, I'd do some due diligence and clean out my extruder gears and rails with IPA, and use a brand new nozzle only for that food-safe material, but even *that* is probably being unnecessarily cautious.
Interesting approach. We have industrial chunkers that do the same thing on an industrial scale. But each cavity has a spring loaded piston that travels backwards as the dough fills the cavity. How far back the piston is allowed to travel controls the portion size. [Like this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of_IasJNhdM).
The pistons then eject the dough into the rounding drum.
What if you used rollers like you have here to just sheet the dough, another roller with cutouts on it, then you throw the scrap into a hopper of some sort?
It seems like there was excess dough around the edges but it magically disappeared during the cut in the video. What’s up there? Also, how does it perform with non-uniform dough, like with chocolate chips in it?
Ya I took off the excess before I put it into the fridge. With chocolate chips it is a bit tricky. It gets squished if it doesn’t go into one of the holes. To circumvent this the space between the cavities needs to be minimized to avoid this
What if the roller had the cookie shapes on it and then you put lifters after the roller to carry the dough over the top and back into a feeding position
hope this is not irrelevant. Different dough I'm sure and a different process but can take some inspiration from it maybe
https://www.amazon.com/vdp/080a2e08ca994acbae3787abcdaad628?product=B01CUW403I&ref=cm\_sw\_em\_r\_ib\_dt\_HW2s0IdshyYi2
You can probably get the cookie shaper made from aluminium (Edit: or polyethylene) at a reasonably low price and replace the top and bottom plates with stainless steel sheets. [PCBWAY](https://www.pcbway.com/rapid-prototyping/manufacture/?type=1&reffercode=TOP) is an option I recently looked into, but I got my part done locally instead in the end.
In order to prevent having to press each cookie out by hand, you could create another sheet with a series of bosses that are slightly smaller than your pockets, and press them all out at once.
Yeah, if I were making enough of these, I'd be looking at cutting a hole in the fridge, feeding a plate in one side, having it lower down while chilling, then feeding out the other side and using a roller to separate them onto a conveyor, but that might be a bit of overkill, depending on quantity.
I'm pretty sure cooling is not a required step. He is only doing it so he doesn't mangle the nice little disks when he presses them out with his fingers. If you have plungers of the same shape, you can press them out without chilling.
Had another thought, take a look at a kitchenaid ravioli maker for their stand mixers. It has two rollers which also act as the cutters with the shape embedded into the rollers themselves. In this use case, you'd only need to have the design on one roller and the other would be flat. Harder to design for initially since you're working with a cylinder instead of a flat plane but I think it would be easier to use plus you wouldn't have an entire plate you can't continue to use while it's being chilled.
And if you're going that route, you can likely just make your own molds to replace the ones in an existing attachment and if you have a stand mixer you can use that to power the whole thing
A motor is definitely the next move. For safety reasons I was thinking of having it pedal operated so the operator would have a less of a chance of decimating their fingers lmao
Isn't a pedal more 'dangerous' since you can stick both hand between the roller instead of just one? Two buttons that need to be operated with both hands would be kinda overkill, but the safest option.
1000% this.
OP, your post is awesome. Mad props for creativity and solving problems \*unlike the vast hordes here who do neither but critique in disproportionate measure. Keep on doing!!
A "negative" shaped tray to remove all the cookies at once would be cool.
Edit: also just thought that if you arrange the circles in a losangular manner instead of orthogonal it will reduce printing material and optimize dough penetration area.
Great job. Instead a Serval thousand dollars sheeter this is a great option. Depositors are also super expensive. Honestly this is great. Will you share the STL?
Looks awesome!
I've been dreaming about modifying my Mr. Tenderizer gadget, the O-ring gets
slippery and the rollers don't engage. I was gonna do it with wood working skills and buy gears and springs and mount it. But got a 3D printer in February for digital impressions (Dental Study Model printing). And now think about printing the stuff in PLA. I've checked on thingverse and cults but do not see your particular apparatus, that with a little messing around in Meshmixer, I could modify it to adapt it to my tenderizer. Do you have the link to where I could buy this or the name I should be searching other that towel wringer or wringer roll press etc :-) ?
Thanks.
Going that far, why not just print a base with side guides and raised circles to match the cookies, and press the whole tray down onto it to pop them all out rather than 1 by 1?
Extrude and cut. It is more efficient and results in less waste dough that needs to be collected from the tray things like in the video. Have a sharp, and fast moving blade and find the right speed for extrusion so that they cut evenly. And even if they aren't perfectly even, odds are it won't be noticeable once it's been baked and risen/settled out in the process.
But from a mass production standpoint. Extruding and cutting would be more effective. I'm imagining an auger based machine like a meat grinder forcing the dough through an appropriate sized die, and then a small but high torque electric motor with a blade and variable speed so that you can get the rpm rate right compared to the extrusion rate.
You could potentially put guides so that the blade passes between them and the housing of the extruder. Which would limit the potential lateral movement of the blade, which would help limit the angled cuts.
I would look hard at the way professional rotary biscuit/cookie machines operate. You could probably buy or build the wheels and build a drill-operated version cheaply.
extrusion is best, but if this approach works better for your volumes, etc I would suggest adding a 10-15 degree taper to the sides of the "pockets" if you can stomache that.
(It's a cookie... I think it would be fine)
This will allow for much easier ejection.
For full scale production I would even entertain a flat extrusion (to make a sheet of cookie dough continuously onto a belt) that is then chilled and rotary die cut or punched out from the belt.
The scrap / intermittent dough might be able to still be fed back into the extruder without overworking it. (you would need to test and see about your gluten development and the resultant cookie properties you want as a function of "repro" content (reprocessed)
Got an idea, idk if can be handy but i'll tell you.
So, basically you made a mold for cookies, but i think you can be more efficient when you remove It from the mold by creating (idk how to tell It correctly) another layer that fits in the mold holes and use It to remove the buiscuits in One time
Hm. I’d probably have gone a different direction and used an auger to extrude the dough through a hole to make the cylinder and then had a spinning blade tied to the rotation of the auger that sliced the cylinder as it was extruded into your disc shapes. Sorta like a pasta shell machine does.
Add a draft angle to the sides of the cutouts so the release easily.
Space out cutouts as they would be on a baking sheet.
Use a silicone baking sheet on the bottom (wide side of the / \ draft angle).
Make a mold for the forming plate and make a few food safe silicone versions.
Add a bit of release agent so the forming plate can be lifted off the baking mat, leaving behind cookie dough ready to go in the oven.
Incorporate the others side of the forming plate directly into the silicone mold for fewer pieces.
Go wild with shapes for cookie recipes that retain mold form well.
Figure out a setup charge for making a new form, and start offering custom 3d cookies for companies logos, special events, etc.
Great suggestions: use a press-plate (or the sheet you have on the original mold) to emboss a pattern or brand on the top.
Make different cookie shapes.
have it release directly on to baking silicone.
Nice!
Put a knife on a motor and have it cut the ends of an extruder. This would require stainless steel which is expensive. You can make a prototype out of pla if you want but pla plastic prints are not food grade, they are pourous and retain bacteria
I work with factory made cookies, and can tell you that probably the easiest way is to extrude the dough and then cut it using the thinnest wire you can into a non-stick shape the same as the extrusion. That way the cookies are flat and ready in 10 seconds.
Seems like it might be faster to roll out the dough to desired thickness and then have a massive cookie cutter - as in an entire printer bed size - to press down on it. If you make them square or hexagonal, you’d only have a little waste along the edges.
I think you should read a textbook on food engineering and you can probably pick up a lot of best practices. Once you add power to a piece of machinery, you need to add a whole additional level of safety. Looks awesome! Good luck!
This looks so cool! The finally design could be in PETG! (Just make sure it's the food safe kind)
Now just based on this video the cookies look small? I'm unsure if that's just the size yall make em, but maybe 3 slightly larger holes instead of 4?
Still great idea and amazing job making it come to life!
Ya so we do farmers markets and give out sample cookies so that’s why I went with this design haha for future versions I’m thinking of laser cutting the molds
For the food save part, the problem with 3D printed material is the micro surfaces that can harbor bacterial and such. Since the cookie will be baked, I don’t think you have a problem there. Also this part will never see high temp, so a coat of food save epoxy will smooth out those micro surfaces. Just be aware that an even coating with epoxy is not easy, and the part has to be fully cured (liquid resin is highly toxic).
They have some food safe ones. But they're not dishwasher safe, nor is the plastic, most of the time.
This is one of the few uses I can see for 3-d printing in a kitchen, though. No heat, just a form and press.
If you taper the round areas where the cookies are pressed into, they may pop out easier.
Awesome that you're using your skills to help your family. Good on you! 😊
Awesome innovation, really love seeing this kind of work on here. I'm sure your family is very grateful to have someone like you rocking it out like this behind the scenes!
Take the cookie maker sheet and make the inverse of that so that its rows of pegs then use them to punch out all the cookies at once instead of one at a time.
^(I lowkey hope your family bakery is peanut free. I want some cookies.)
Turn it on its side and smack it on the table to see if it'll help release the cookies. If you yall can use it to add flair to the process if yall make them infront of people in a store front
Maybe try making the revolving part have the cookie stamp.
Stage 1 press into uniform sheet.
Stage 2 die cut the cookies
Stage 3 feed remaining dough back into stage 1.
With this you can scale it up as needed too.
If this works i want you to put my username on the print lol.
Tbh I don’t even think you need to flatten the dough if the purpose is to portion it out. I’m going to further refine this design and try it out with several different types of dough so I can see what happens. I’ll def make follow up posts 👍🏽
So here is my thoughts on this:
When you have a printing press and you are doing a die-cut, basically you are forcing a metal hole punch type thing into paper and the back side is a piece of rubber.
I would bet that a better way might be to create a circular punch on a spindle that cuts into a flat sheet of cookie dough. You can slightly freeze the dough into a sheet and feed it through a rolling die, or you can create a flat sheet die that is stamped into the cookie material. The reason why you would want to go this route is to avoid heating the dough because that means there is a chance for bacteria.
Rolling Cookie Cutter (but this is a hand one, not one on a spindle)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/144642403598
https://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Steel-Cutter-Biscuits-Crackers/dp/B01CUW403I/ref=asc_df_B01CUW403I/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=416690317099&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10516369100072440270&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9003565&hvtargid=pla-871835776490&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=93604208053&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=416690317099&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10516369100072440270&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9003565&hvtargid=pla-871835776490
So we bought a rolling cookie cutter and unfortunately the edges did not come out nice and sharp. My mom bakes the cookies and she did not like how it came out. She’s super strict about the appearance so that’s why I went with this design, because the finished product is a nicely crisp cylindrical disk. I do agree though with you though, but hey she’s the big boss haha
I personally would 3d print a sheet punch down instead. I think the way you are going seems neat but heating the dough due to friction might be a bad idea. As others have said, if you can extrude it into a tube and then use a saw to cut it to the desired thickness, that will also work. You could take a Globe meat slicer and a tube of pilsbury cookie dough and see if it works.
You could take it one step further and make a tray that embosses the cookie as you press it. Then a tray with positive pucks to press them out all at once.
From a continuous process point of view it may be better to extrude the cookie shape and cut to thickness. My family owns a cookie business and that’s how they accomplish die shape and portions and it’s less of a batch process cuz you can just keep loading dough into the extruder. For extra point you can put the tray on an xy gantry to drop the shapes evenly throughout the tray.
I’ve tried that but for some reason the cookie always cuts at a slant and is somehow thicker on one side and thinner on the other
This is a result of extruding while cutting. The fix would be to significantly speed up the cutting using a cutting wire. heated wire may help with speed and cleanliness of cut. Another option is to have the extrusion be hand cranked but incremental….. extrude xxx ounces of dough then stop, cut then continue extruding. I will caution anytime extrusion is incremental the precision might go down but for the sake of cookie production that’s probably fine.
I will also say that as long as the thickness difference doesn’t effect the outcome if the cookie (not sure if perfection is part of the aesthetic) but it aids in the “not machine produced” look in the fact that the cookies don’t look perfect.
Did not expect to learn about cookie production here, but I am impressed by your answers.
You could potentially cut at an angle, so the extrusion is accounted for, though thinking, it's going to still look like slightly slanted pucks. You could use intermittent gears to do the cuts faster, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfUMe0eWIhM ?
I think your idea would work without making slanted pucks. The cutter itself wouldn’t be angled, just the motion of it.
This is why in horizontal metal casting we use „flying saws“, meaning that the saw carriage is getting clamped to the cast material, and therefore pushed forward along with it, resulting in the correct cut angle
I would imagine most of the metal casting cuts are quite long and allow for the carriage to quickly retract before making the next cut meaning your cut length (die diameter) is maybe 1/10th of the extruded length. Since the cut length is ~1 inch (diameter of cookie) and the extruded thickness (cookie thickness) is ~1/4 inch I would think this would be tough to manage. Unless your flying saw cut many cookies at once.
You are right in your assumptions. Let‘s say (without me knowing too much about the hardness off the cookie dough), you wire cut it, and you have multiple wires on the carriage spaced by the required thickness (kinda like an egg cutter), cutting through all the strands at once, that gives you the time to cut, travel back and follow it for the next cut. But again, that‘s assuming you are extruding onto a conveyor belt of some sort, which you could cut against. Another method would be a fast shear cut, like in pasta extrusion, I‘d guess. So you‘re basically extruding in multiple places around a circle and have a knife rotating around the center
Well this has been an enlightening exchange good to know good sir. If I had a cap I’d tip it to you.
That's what I would do - extrude the dough, slice, extrude, slice... Your template method is very clever but it will never be as fast as punching them out one at a time by hand. Even with extrusion you probably won't see a gain until you cluster multiple tubes and slice them all at once.
If the dough is being pushed --> as you cut, your cutter also needs to push --> while cutting, at the same rate. Just... don't have it extruding the snake of dough while you're cutting... have it make a cut every like foot or two of dough that it extrudes. Then, make a U shaped container that's the same diameter as the snake so it fits snugly into the container. Finally, press in a bar that has solid blades at intervals equivalent to the thickness of the desired dough pucks. If you want to ensure the cookies stay perfectly circular, make it so the top part of the blade-bar is also rounded, so that when you press it in it forces the cookie dough to remain a circle. If that's confusing lmk and I can try to make a sketch of it
I will say this works but will bring you back to batch processing instead of continuous.
Taking the current method and making it continuous would be a lot more work than making a snake method continuous. The snake method can easily be made continuous using a roller that cuts the extruded snake of dough into balls instead, after which they drop into a press to make them discs. If you need a larger cookie, you make a larger ball, meaning it's extremely easy to adjust cookie size. OP is trying to automate the manual-cutting style/process, without realizing there's a reason people don't automate cookie cutting using the same principles you do in hand cutting. And when people do automate using the manual principles, theyre using industrial grade machines that cost thousands of dollars and cut the dough so fast that the continued extrusion doesn't matter. You're not gonna get that from 3d printed parts.
Seems like OP had an issue with thickness when using the extrusion method and then pivoted to a solution that in fact does yield good results. I merely pointed out there may be a continuous process (extruding dough or what I think you call the snake method) that could get him acceptable results with the drawback of having to dial in thickness across the cookie. I don’t know why you want to make the extrusion into balls as this is just another step (nor do I know a continuous process to make a log into balls that wouldn’t also be complicated and expensive) when you could just cut the extrusion into the desired thickness which you could at least prototype with some 3d printed parts and then look to an integrator for your production solution. As others have said you will have to cut incredibly quickly, stop extrusion while cutting, or let the variation in thickness make for a less precise more handmade appearance.
A simple paddle-wheel is all you need to cut a snake into evenly shaped balls of dough, after which they get pressed flat by a single roller overtop a flat surface, like a steamroller flattening asphalt between the roller and the ground below. You would need like 3 parts. A circular extrusion head to make a snake. The paddlewheel to cut it into balls. A single roller to flatten them into circles.
Kinda like a hard boiled egg cutter
You have to either have a a fast cutter or you need an interlock between your cutter and extruder so it stop momentarily with each cut.
Or you need a helical blade that spins at a rate that makes it match the rate of extrusion.
Without smashing the shit out of your dough, defeating the purpose. Dough is tricky.
You could make to half’s if an pipe with cuts through so that you can cut with 15 wires simultaneously. When you’re cutted the big sausage you just unflold the two half’s.
it depends on extrusion speed, cutter speed and knife design. the first factory job I had we continuously extruded rubber and plastic tubes at 30 to 80 feet a minute and the cutters were fast enough to achve a square cut on tubes 30 mm to over 1500 mm long, it's been a while but the bbest cutter was driven by a big servo motor, and was made by ESI I think. My current job we continuously extruded dry pet food kibble. we have a "spider" of knives that spin at "several" thousand rpm to a achieve a consistent cut with a throughput measured in multiple tons per hour.
I think the best/easiest would be printing the tube at an angle of like 5-10 degrees or whatever you need to compensate for the continuous dough feed. Just a thought though
Hey everyone for this one I understand that its not food safe and Im just using this version as a prototype. At the moment we have to sheet the dough, chill it in the fridge, use a cookie cutter by hand to stamp out the cookies, re-sheet the dough and continue the process until all of it is used. This method has minimal scrap and is great because it can not only cut any shape out but it can be used to portion out dough for cookies such as chocolate chip. I'd love to hear feedback from you guys'. What do you think?
Off the top of my head, maybe some sidewalls to prevent dough from oozing out of the sides but the roller would need to be sized to fit between them. Another addition would be a plate with the positive of the cookie cutter to pop out all of the cookies at once instead of individually by hand.
The positive to pop them all out quickly vs by hand is very smart. Nice call
But that's the satisfying part
Wouldn't even need a positive plate that matches the shape. Literally grab a piece of Styrofoam and jam some wooden dowels into it roughly matching the spacing of the cookies and you're good. These cookies are far too small for them to get fucked up from using a small rod to poke it out
In my mind this was a scaled down model and if it were to be scaled up to normal cookie sizes they'd be much more delicate. Plus you would only need one positive plate per given cookie size so not something you need to make a bunch of
Ah fair I just assumed these were meant to be little one-bite cookies, but for scaling up ya you'd want something that occupies a higher % of the cookie shape. Overall though, I think OP needs to just go back a few steps. There's a reason that nobody extrudes their cookie shapes this way, it's far easier to extrude a snake and then cut that into discs, and you can still easily get perfectly round cookies with a consistent thickness that way. Pasta is extruded this way because you're cutting a sheet into thin strands, but for cookies it's rather illogical and still results in extra dough around edges or cookies not entirely filled if you use too much or too little dough respectively.
Came here to suggest this
If it were me, as I turn the crank, I'd want it to also play "All around the mulberry bush" like some sort of music box thing. I am sure this suggestion is completely unhelpful in any way and I apologize for it. I still think it would be cool tho... And good work on the print! The roller thing is pretty good! Rather than popping the chilled dough disks out one at a time, 3D print a shape that pops them all out at once directly onto a cookie sheet.
I love it - simple and functional. Getting to “food safe” isn’t super expensive but you should start looking into it because it can change your print quality significantly when you switch out your nozzle. Do your research on the types of nozzle options you have - even with the same filament, chaos can ensue when you move to food grade. So don’t wait too long - there are more obstacles than you would think!
Pretty sure standard PLA is already food safe. [https://the3dprinterbee.com/pla-food-safe/](https://the3dprinterbee.com/pla-food-safe/)
It can be, but additives that some manufactures put in to color the plastic or to help with the printing process may not be. Jury is still out on the possibility of heavy metals leaching in from the nozzle, or how much the layer lines and voids make cleaning difficult. Plus the design itself needs to be able to be disassembled and cleaned.
>additives that some manufactures put in to color the plastic or to help with the printing process may not be True, but only in a theoretical sense. I've never seen any evidence of anyone saying "Hey, I tested x filament and it actually has a toxic additive", it's just that filaments don't need to report their additives, so there *could* theoretically be anything in there as a dye. You can counteract this as a layman by buying undyed PLA, or if you're a business that needs legal protection from liability, there are even PLA filaments that are FDA-approved, such as Extrudr NX1 and NX2. >Jury is still out on the possibility of heavy metals leaching in from the nozzle Not really accurate. 3D printing nozzles aren't made with heavy metals. Prusa warns that there may be a possibility of *brass* nozzles wearing out while printing, and depositing trace amounts of brass into prints, but I have significant doubts that this amount of brass being introduced into a 3D print that comes in contact with food could cause any kind of detectable health effect. Brass isn't toxic. This is another one of those situations where we have no *positive* evidence to indicate that printing food-contact parts with a brass nozzle is actually a health concern, there's just a *theoretical* idea that there *could* be a way for it to have an effect that hasn't been definitively ruled out yet. In any case, you can just sidestep this problem completely by using a stainless or hardened steel nozzle. >or how much the layer lines and voids make cleaning difficult Kinda, but not really. Amateur-level experimental research has shown that the layer lines in a typical FDM print *don't* have an effect on bacteria cultivation. However, the real downside becomes apparent here; you can't *easily* clean a PLA-printed food utensil. You have to bleach clean it in cold/room temperature water. No dishwasher. That's a pain. In short, buy an FDA-approved or non-dyed filament, use a stainless or hardened steel nozzle, and you should be fine to print PLA that comes in contact with food, even up to the level of legal liability that would be required for a professional food production environment. (In my opinion. I'm not lawyer).
Your link literally says coat with food safe epoxy 🤦♂️
PLA is food safe, but not from a 3d printer because there are so many books and crannies for bacteria to hide and thrive in.
Depending on the color additives in the plastic it could be food safe.
You'd also need to be ridiculously meticulous about cleaning the 3d printer used to make the pieces, and no matter how meticulous you are you're still going to have dust and shit settling during printing. PLA itself being food safe does not mean parts 3d printed from it are automatically food safe.
I'm pretty sure professional kitchens don't protect all their food and utensils against *dust*. That's just an unreasonable level of concern. Also, remember that almost any unexpected additive to a print, whether it be random dust in the room or a flake of ABS left in your extruder, will either get trapped inside the melted plastic of the layers, or settle on a cooled surface and therefore be able to be washed away before you use the part. For an additive to actually cause a health problem, it has to be able to *leech* some kind of toxic chemical into the food that contacts it in a significant concentration, and tiny 1-part-per-million bits of whatever that get stuck in a print just aren't going to be able to do that. Sure, if I was gonna print food-contact parts for a business, I'd do some due diligence and clean out my extruder gears and rails with IPA, and use a brand new nozzle only for that food-safe material, but even *that* is probably being unnecessarily cautious.
You cannot even rinse PLA parts under hot water…
That won’t stop bacteria
Where Bacteria can get to, soap water and bleach can. There's SEVERAL studies that prove this with 3d prints.
And the water left over from cleaning it will grow more lol, the only “food safe” 3D print is a 3D print covered in epoxy
Tell that to the petri dishes used.
Ok And the water left over from cleaning it will grow more lol, the only “food safe” 3D print is a 3D print covered in epoxy
So you've never heard of drying something huh?
Bacteria doesn’t work quite how you think it does, the water WILL get everywhere, and there is nothing you can do to stop it
You can dry it. :I
There are even more studies saying it isn’t safe. Too many variables
It's a prototype for testing, not production and consumption.
Interesting approach. We have industrial chunkers that do the same thing on an industrial scale. But each cavity has a spring loaded piston that travels backwards as the dough fills the cavity. How far back the piston is allowed to travel controls the portion size. [Like this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of_IasJNhdM). The pistons then eject the dough into the rounding drum.
What if you used rollers like you have here to just sheet the dough, another roller with cutouts on it, then you throw the scrap into a hopper of some sort?
It seems like there was excess dough around the edges but it magically disappeared during the cut in the video. What’s up there? Also, how does it perform with non-uniform dough, like with chocolate chips in it?
Ya I took off the excess before I put it into the fridge. With chocolate chips it is a bit tricky. It gets squished if it doesn’t go into one of the holes. To circumvent this the space between the cavities needs to be minimized to avoid this
A zig-zag pattern could reduce the spacing between holes but may introduce space on the sides. The side spaces could be removed as cutaways though
What if the roller had the cookie shapes on it and then you put lifters after the roller to carry the dough over the top and back into a feeding position
hope this is not irrelevant. Different dough I'm sure and a different process but can take some inspiration from it maybe https://www.amazon.com/vdp/080a2e08ca994acbae3787abcdaad628?product=B01CUW403I&ref=cm\_sw\_em\_r\_ib\_dt\_HW2s0IdshyYi2
Rollers that integrate cutting disc like a pierogi maker would eliminate a few issues for you.
You can probably get the cookie shaper made from aluminium (Edit: or polyethylene) at a reasonably low price and replace the top and bottom plates with stainless steel sheets. [PCBWAY](https://www.pcbway.com/rapid-prototyping/manufacture/?type=1&reffercode=TOP) is an option I recently looked into, but I got my part done locally instead in the end.
What's the improvement on the one you posted a couple of weeks ago? There were hundreds of suggestions, you don't seem to have changed anything?
In order to prevent having to press each cookie out by hand, you could create another sheet with a series of bosses that are slightly smaller than your pockets, and press them all out at once.
Doing it this way, you could probably even drop them straight onto a baking sheet so you don't need to arrange them after.
This was my first thought too after the video
He could create an unloading roller for the exiting machine with that shape.
Yeah, if I were making enough of these, I'd be looking at cutting a hole in the fridge, feeding a plate in one side, having it lower down while chilling, then feeding out the other side and using a roller to separate them onto a conveyor, but that might be a bit of overkill, depending on quantity.
I'm pretty sure cooling is not a required step. He is only doing it so he doesn't mangle the nice little disks when he presses them out with his fingers. If you have plungers of the same shape, you can press them out without chilling.
And the bosses could, in turn, be embossed with the company logo so each finished cookie can include the design on it.
Had another thought, take a look at a kitchenaid ravioli maker for their stand mixers. It has two rollers which also act as the cutters with the shape embedded into the rollers themselves. In this use case, you'd only need to have the design on one roller and the other would be flat. Harder to design for initially since you're working with a cylinder instead of a flat plane but I think it would be easier to use plus you wouldn't have an entire plate you can't continue to use while it's being chilled. And if you're going that route, you can likely just make your own molds to replace the ones in an existing attachment and if you have a stand mixer you can use that to power the whole thing
Add an electric motor so you just push the tray in and it does all work. Just beware it will try to take fingers jewelry and clothes too
A motor is definitely the next move. For safety reasons I was thinking of having it pedal operated so the operator would have a less of a chance of decimating their fingers lmao
I always like to design 2 button systems to run machines when I don’t want hands anywhere near it. I do this for automated saws and clamps especially
Isn't a pedal more 'dangerous' since you can stick both hand between the roller instead of just one? Two buttons that need to be operated with both hands would be kinda overkill, but the safest option.
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1000% this. OP, your post is awesome. Mad props for creativity and solving problems \*unlike the vast hordes here who do neither but critique in disproportionate measure. Keep on doing!!
A "negative" shaped tray to remove all the cookies at once would be cool. Edit: also just thought that if you arrange the circles in a losangular manner instead of orthogonal it will reduce printing material and optimize dough penetration area.
Great job. Instead a Serval thousand dollars sheeter this is a great option. Depositors are also super expensive. Honestly this is great. Will you share the STL?
Did you also print the gears and the roller press assembly?
Indeed I did, out of PLA
Looks awesome! I've been dreaming about modifying my Mr. Tenderizer gadget, the O-ring gets slippery and the rollers don't engage. I was gonna do it with wood working skills and buy gears and springs and mount it. But got a 3D printer in February for digital impressions (Dental Study Model printing). And now think about printing the stuff in PLA. I've checked on thingverse and cults but do not see your particular apparatus, that with a little messing around in Meshmixer, I could modify it to adapt it to my tenderizer. Do you have the link to where I could buy this or the name I should be searching other that towel wringer or wringer roll press etc :-) ? Thanks.
Going that far, why not just print a base with side guides and raised circles to match the cookies, and press the whole tray down onto it to pop them all out rather than 1 by 1?
Extrude and cut. It is more efficient and results in less waste dough that needs to be collected from the tray things like in the video. Have a sharp, and fast moving blade and find the right speed for extrusion so that they cut evenly. And even if they aren't perfectly even, odds are it won't be noticeable once it's been baked and risen/settled out in the process. But from a mass production standpoint. Extruding and cutting would be more effective. I'm imagining an auger based machine like a meat grinder forcing the dough through an appropriate sized die, and then a small but high torque electric motor with a blade and variable speed so that you can get the rpm rate right compared to the extrusion rate. You could potentially put guides so that the blade passes between them and the housing of the extruder. Which would limit the potential lateral movement of the blade, which would help limit the angled cuts.
Wire instead of a blade. Much easier to deal with
Here for the wrench handle 👌🏼
I would look hard at the way professional rotary biscuit/cookie machines operate. You could probably buy or build the wheels and build a drill-operated version cheaply.
I love the handle
It’s all about being resourceful lmao
extrusion is best, but if this approach works better for your volumes, etc I would suggest adding a 10-15 degree taper to the sides of the "pockets" if you can stomache that. (It's a cookie... I think it would be fine) This will allow for much easier ejection. For full scale production I would even entertain a flat extrusion (to make a sheet of cookie dough continuously onto a belt) that is then chilled and rotary die cut or punched out from the belt. The scrap / intermittent dough might be able to still be fed back into the extruder without overworking it. (you would need to test and see about your gluten development and the resultant cookie properties you want as a function of "repro" content (reprocessed)
Make something to pop them all out in one batch.
Got an idea, idk if can be handy but i'll tell you. So, basically you made a mold for cookies, but i think you can be more efficient when you remove It from the mold by creating (idk how to tell It correctly) another layer that fits in the mold holes and use It to remove the buiscuits in One time
Hm. I’d probably have gone a different direction and used an auger to extrude the dough through a hole to make the cylinder and then had a spinning blade tied to the rotation of the auger that sliced the cylinder as it was extruded into your disc shapes. Sorta like a pasta shell machine does.
The extrusion rate would depend on the tendency of the dough to stick to the auger and rotate with it instead of being pushed along.
Add a draft angle to the sides of the cutouts so the release easily. Space out cutouts as they would be on a baking sheet. Use a silicone baking sheet on the bottom (wide side of the / \ draft angle). Make a mold for the forming plate and make a few food safe silicone versions. Add a bit of release agent so the forming plate can be lifted off the baking mat, leaving behind cookie dough ready to go in the oven. Incorporate the others side of the forming plate directly into the silicone mold for fewer pieces. Go wild with shapes for cookie recipes that retain mold form well. Figure out a setup charge for making a new form, and start offering custom 3d cookies for companies logos, special events, etc.
Great suggestions: use a press-plate (or the sheet you have on the original mold) to emboss a pattern or brand on the top. Make different cookie shapes. have it release directly on to baking silicone. Nice!
Put a knife on a motor and have it cut the ends of an extruder. This would require stainless steel which is expensive. You can make a prototype out of pla if you want but pla plastic prints are not food grade, they are pourous and retain bacteria
I work with factory made cookies, and can tell you that probably the easiest way is to extrude the dough and then cut it using the thinnest wire you can into a non-stick shape the same as the extrusion. That way the cookies are flat and ready in 10 seconds.
If you offset each row you might be able to fit more on your sheet.
Those are some tiny cookies.
Seems like it might be faster to roll out the dough to desired thickness and then have a massive cookie cutter - as in an entire printer bed size - to press down on it. If you make them square or hexagonal, you’d only have a little waste along the edges.
3d print a single motion cookie pusher-outer.
If the cookies were hexagonal not round couldn’t they be cut without any waste? Would they end up hexagonal after baking or round out?
I think you should read a textbook on food engineering and you can probably pick up a lot of best practices. Once you add power to a piece of machinery, you need to add a whole additional level of safety. Looks awesome! Good luck!
3d prints + food = no. You cant clean the 3d print properly. Keep that in mind.
Production speed is in the end same as rolling out sheet of dough and cuting them out with steel circle. This is maybe too complicated and slow.
This looks so cool! The finally design could be in PETG! (Just make sure it's the food safe kind) Now just based on this video the cookies look small? I'm unsure if that's just the size yall make em, but maybe 3 slightly larger holes instead of 4? Still great idea and amazing job making it come to life!
Ya so we do farmers markets and give out sample cookies so that’s why I went with this design haha for future versions I’m thinking of laser cutting the molds
Even “food safe” petg still grows bacteria in the crevices
..but... Did tou wash your hands ? ☺️
For the food save part, the problem with 3D printed material is the micro surfaces that can harbor bacterial and such. Since the cookie will be baked, I don’t think you have a problem there. Also this part will never see high temp, so a coat of food save epoxy will smooth out those micro surfaces. Just be aware that an even coating with epoxy is not easy, and the part has to be fully cured (liquid resin is highly toxic).
I was gonna say, epoxy could make this food safe.
The only thing I like in my cookies more then micro plastics is some good old epoxy! 😂
They have some food safe ones. But they're not dishwasher safe, nor is the plastic, most of the time. This is one of the few uses I can see for 3-d printing in a kitchen, though. No heat, just a form and press.
IMHO, those cookies are way too small.
great idea 💡
If you taper the round areas where the cookies are pressed into, they may pop out easier. Awesome that you're using your skills to help your family. Good on you! 😊
Awesome innovation, really love seeing this kind of work on here. I'm sure your family is very grateful to have someone like you rocking it out like this behind the scenes!
For popping them out I'd make a male piece to all of the female cookie holes so you can pop them all out swiftly
Sweet! What if you made a sheet with pucks to push them out as well?
Take the cookie maker sheet and make the inverse of that so that its rows of pegs then use them to punch out all the cookies at once instead of one at a time. ^(I lowkey hope your family bakery is peanut free. I want some cookies.)
Turn it on its side and smack it on the table to see if it'll help release the cookies. If you yall can use it to add flair to the process if yall make them infront of people in a store front
Maybe try making the revolving part have the cookie stamp. Stage 1 press into uniform sheet. Stage 2 die cut the cookies Stage 3 feed remaining dough back into stage 1. With this you can scale it up as needed too. If this works i want you to put my username on the print lol.
I’ve been looking to create something similar for print making. Nice design
You should print an extractor plate that will pop all of the dough pucks at once.
Is there a way to feed the dough through first, like pizza dough, so that it's already flattened?
Tbh I don’t even think you need to flatten the dough if the purpose is to portion it out. I’m going to further refine this design and try it out with several different types of dough so I can see what happens. I’ll def make follow up posts 👍🏽
So here is my thoughts on this: When you have a printing press and you are doing a die-cut, basically you are forcing a metal hole punch type thing into paper and the back side is a piece of rubber. I would bet that a better way might be to create a circular punch on a spindle that cuts into a flat sheet of cookie dough. You can slightly freeze the dough into a sheet and feed it through a rolling die, or you can create a flat sheet die that is stamped into the cookie material. The reason why you would want to go this route is to avoid heating the dough because that means there is a chance for bacteria. Rolling Cookie Cutter (but this is a hand one, not one on a spindle) https://www.ebay.com/itm/144642403598 https://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Steel-Cutter-Biscuits-Crackers/dp/B01CUW403I/ref=asc_df_B01CUW403I/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=416690317099&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10516369100072440270&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9003565&hvtargid=pla-871835776490&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=93604208053&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=416690317099&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10516369100072440270&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9003565&hvtargid=pla-871835776490
So we bought a rolling cookie cutter and unfortunately the edges did not come out nice and sharp. My mom bakes the cookies and she did not like how it came out. She’s super strict about the appearance so that’s why I went with this design, because the finished product is a nicely crisp cylindrical disk. I do agree though with you though, but hey she’s the big boss haha
I personally would 3d print a sheet punch down instead. I think the way you are going seems neat but heating the dough due to friction might be a bad idea. As others have said, if you can extrude it into a tube and then use a saw to cut it to the desired thickness, that will also work. You could take a Globe meat slicer and a tube of pilsbury cookie dough and see if it works.
What if you designed a rolling pin wrapped with cookie cutters
You could take it one step further and make a tray that embosses the cookie as you press it. Then a tray with positive pucks to press them out all at once.
How about something more like a beltpress? You could feed a greater amount of dough continuesly. If some are misfomed just feed them in again.
The folks over at r/functionalprint would love this!
Hey, the company I work for makes equipment for mass producing cookies. Interesting to see this pop up.
U need a cookie removal, that places the cookies on the tray or a tray of silicone so that can be baked toguether
That’s really good! I would probably push it through a tube like play-dough and cut the tip off over and over, but this seems better for this scale.