Support material

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house - well, the kitchen actually - I was makin a gingerbread house with my sis. Just yesterday, I broke of a bit of the dried icing (which took quite a bit of force) and ate it. Although it was crunchy, it dissolved in my mouth after a while, which got me thinking...possible support material? Everything to make royal icing is available nearly everywhere. Its like milk, egg white, and confectioners sugar. Once printing is done, just soak in water for a bit, and you have your perfect part, overhangs and all! A syringe type extruder would probably best for the icing, though.

I'm not sure that the royal icing would work. The problem is the minimum feature size. Our minimum feature on the support material must correspond to the minimum feature on the extruded material. I suggest getting a syringe and trying to extrude through a 500 micron tip. If that works, we should be all set for support material.

My idea for support was similar, but I was thinking of using molten sugar.

Corn starch dissolved in water to make a paster works well too

... i don't think starch in water will work - it's a 'non-Newtonian' fluid with some specifics: when compressed, it will stiffen, when releasing the tension, it will went fluid again.

This could mean that either you cant' press it through a tube or when setting a dot on top of another, both will flow away ...

Viktor

Starch/water forms a colloid with the properties that Viktor rightly describes. I've worked with such mixes and they are tricky at the best of times. The big problem is that the colloid is wet. I doubt you'll be able to print molten plastic across it.

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