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At home, covering food in chocolate typically involves heating up a mixture, carefully lowering each piece into the bowl, mixing until evenly coated, and then finally letting the excess drip off with a fork. But when scaling to many more items, the process becomes far too tedious, which is why commercial operations rely on a machine called an enrober. With it, food passes underneath a cascade of chocolate on a conveyor belt- allowing for an even coat without much waste. Wanting to build one of his own for faster cooking, Chuck from the YouTube channel Startup Chuck set about designing one. chocolate enrober
Chocolate, unlike other fluids such as water, is largely saturated fat, meaning that cooling to room temperature results in a solid that can't be moved around very easily. However, chocolate fountains already account for this fact by containing an internal heater in addition to an auger-based pump that can move liquid chocolate from the basin up to the top while ensuring a consistent flow. After finding a suitable model, Chuck 3D printed a new nozzle that fits on top of the fountain and redirects the chocolate to flow in a waterfall-like pattern to one side for even coating.
The second aspect of an enrober is the conveyor belt, as it is what allows the food passing underneath to get coated and get rid of any excess. Chucked sourced his from a conveyor toaster oven, and after a bit of machining, was able to attach a flexible coupler from a geared DC motor directly to the drive shaft.
Chocolate dripping from the conveyor is captured below by a custom tray that gently feeds it downwards and back into the base of the fountain.
Since not everything fits nicely onto the conveyor belt, especially items such as peanuts and small bits of dried fruit, Chuck needed a way to evenly coat these in chocolate too. His solution was to make a small drum that can be driven by the attachment hub on a stand mixer.
To see more about how Chuck created these two useful kitchen gadgets, you can watch his build and demonstration video here on YouTube.
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