Modeling the process of forming dough products based on wheat flour using extrusion 3D printing

Food 3D printing process is characterized by a complex relationship between the process parameters, the technological properties of the food mass and the geometric parameters of the designed product. The article studies the influence of the control parameters of a food 3D printer on the quality of printing products from wheat dough and determines their optimal values. For the dough preparation, durum wheat flour mixed with water was used. For the experimental study of the 3D printing process, an installation developed on the basis of a Magnum Creative 2 UNI 3D printer was used. The study is based on the response surface methodology using the Box–Behnken design, which is a three-factor rotatable design that excludes the extreme points of a full factorial experiment, which reduced the number of experiments while maintaining the possibility of constructing a quadratic model. The experimental design consisted of 29 different combinations with five central points. The nozzle travel speed, material consumption, nozzle diameter, and relative nozzle pitch were selected as the main factors influencing the process of 3D printing of wheat dough products. The following factors were defined to assess the influence of the operating parameters on the extrusion 3D printing process: printing time, finished product weight, and printed product quality. Based on multiple regression analysis, mathematical models of the influence of printer control parameters on printing time and product weight are presented. Parameters were optimized using the desirability function, with the solution with the maximum desirability value recognized as optimal. As a result, the following optimal printing parameters were established: nozzle travel speed 38.5 mm/s; material consumption 54.8 mm³/s; nozzle diameter 1 mm; relative nozzle pitch 100%. The obtained results are of practical importance for setting up three-dimensional printing modes for wheat dough products.