Cakewalk3D lets your regular 3D printer decorate food

You’d have to be a real foodie to drop a few thousand dollars on a dedicated food printer, but what if you could transform a regular 3D printer into one for a fraction of that? That’s the premise behind Cakewalk3D, a new Kickstarter project that promises to let you print designs on cakes, appetizers and more on the cheap.

If you have a supported cartesian 3D printer from Prusa, Creality and several other brands (listed here), you just need to find an appropriate design, prepare the ingredients, pour them into a special tube, install it on the printer and launch your project. To create a design, you can download the “3D slicer” software that creates a continuous path to avoid food-printing related flaws.

Sample food materials include chocolate, meringue, vegetable puree, ketchup, guacamole and honey — anything with the correct viscosity. Digital Patisserie, the company behind the product, supplies recipes and settings, and you’ll receive a tested food mix so you can get a feel for the system and materials required. Some of the designs shown on the site include graphics, text, characters and even photo-style prints.

The company notes that unlike other paste extruders for 3D printers, its parts are food-safe, and the kit is open source if you want to make them yourself. You can buy it as a ready-to-go kit, or save money by using your 3D printer to make a few parts yourself. As for pricing, the maker kit starts at $59, the standard kit requiring two 3D-printed parts is $89, and the full kit, with everything ready to install, is $129. Delivery is ambitiously set for December 2020, but as usual with crowdfunded projects, beware that you may pay your money and never receive the product.