IceCreamer Convivium 8P

The evolution of ice cream machines

Optimization in numbers

Increased hourly production
178%

Task and challenge

Product

Icecreamer

Application

Food & Beverage

Not only does 3D printing enable the optimization of mechanical properties such as weight, stiffness and strength, but it is also capable of optimizing properties such as heat transfer and efficiency in a professional ice cream maker.

Solution

About 178% increased hourly production compared to competitors in the same category. Thanks to the core of Icecreamer: a 3D printing Heat Exchanger. The exchanger inside the machine has been totally rethought and designed to be able to take full advantage of the benefits of additive technologies. In this way a tailor-made exchanger with excellent heat transfer properties was created, this was made possible by creating conformal channels duly designed to ensure optimized heat flow along all the exchanger walls. Likewise, the component was optimized to grow without any need for support structures to cut down one of the cost items and make this incredible exchanger even more competitive. This results in a high value-added product that gives our ice cream machine properties that cannot be compared with any other currently on the market.

The materials used in the production of these components meet all CE guidelines for direct and safe contact with food. In fact, to date, additive technologies allow an increasingly wide range of materials to be used. These include several materials that possess both food contact and skin contact properties. Thus, these next-generation materials lend themselves excellently to the food industry, bringing the AM world closer to new frontiers. In particular, the materials used inside the machine are all certified for food use, especially the 3D-printed components in direct contact with ice cream.

The cylinder is designed for additive manufacturing which allows complex geometries impossible to get through traditional technologies. It was possible to design the exchanger with conformal channels and through thermal and fluid dynamic simulations it was possible to improve the heat flow, thus the heat exchange between the gas flowing inside the exchanger, the exchanger walls and the milk. This has led to excellent results in terms of efficiency by giving the final product characteristics unattainable with conventional heat exchangers, which are limited by cost or complexity too high to achieve. The result was therefore a product of higher quality, creaminess and goodness, thanks to better control and maintenance of temperature and optimized heat exchange. In fact, thanks to the high performance in terms of heat exchange and temperature uniformity that is maintained inside the machine, the milk during its processing and transformation into ice cream will tend not to crystallize. Maintaining a characteristic microstructure given by the optimized freezing kinetics and giving to the ice cream an incomparable creaminess. in fact, it is demonstrated how the microstructure of ice crystals determines the rigidity and "scoopability" of ice cream at low temperatures. (Source: Windhab, Erich. (2004). Impact of mechanical treatment of ice cream at ultra low temperature on scoopability, melting behaviour and creaminess; Others)

Numbers to refer to

178%
Increased hourly production

Our services

NIRI collects over 50 years of AM experience through the diverse backgrounds of our specialists and engineers to advise, design and industrialize additive manufacturing solutions. Our consulting and engineering teams offer services to Executive Boards for strategy, to R&D, Engineering and Technical Departments for specialist engineering and to Manufacturing Departments for AM implementation.