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In recent years, aging is progressing in Japan. Elderly people can't swallow the food well. So, the need of soft food is increasing greatly with the aging of the population. There are so few satisfying foods for the elderly to enjoy a meal. An equipment of printing soft food gives the elderly a big dream and is promising. In this study, we aim at developing a 3D edible gel printer in order to make soft food for the elderly. We made a prototype of the 3D edible gel printer. The printer consists of syringe pump and dispenser. The syringe pump extrudes the solution. The dispenser allows to model threedimensional objects. We use agar solution as the ink to carry out the printing. Agar’s gelation deeply depends on temperature. Therefore temperature control of the solution is important to mold optimal shapes because the physical crosslinking network of agar’s solution is instable. We succeeded in making the gels and plate-shape gel using the 3D edible gel printer. Further more, in order to increase the gelation speed agar’s solution, we changed the dispenser and the printing test is being done now. 4 kinds of soft food prepared from agar and gelatin were printed by the 3D edible gel printer. The compression tests of the printed soft food samples were done and their hardness is measured because the hardness is one of very important factors which influence the food texture greatly. In the future, the viscosity of the agar solution or other food ink should be adjusted to suitable for printing.
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