I spend most of my workday writing Go, so my monkey brain immediately assumed that this was an epic treatise on crispy chocolate from Russ Cox. I'm...slightly disappointed that it's not.
Interesting stuff! I make chocolate moulds out of 3D printed shapes and I’ve been struggling with solidifying the molten chocolate. After reading a bit, it seems like I’m ruining the crystalline structure of the material by overheating it. Funny how it sounds like metallurgy but is just chocolate :)
Yeah temperature and tempering is the key - some even use sous vide set ups for it.
The best tip I've found is using plastic bowls - because they don't retain heat like ceramic and metal bowls do, making it "easier" to control temperature
Don't miss the "3D printing" section: they describe some of the challenges.
Makes me want to work on the chocolate extrusion problem myself; "air pressure" seems a poor choice when they already have a syringe and could have a mechanical plunger.
constantly rotate the plunger and maybe have some impeller flanges on it.
this whole resevior assembly, with heaters and vibration etc can be kept separate from the nozzle with a "hot bowden tube"; that'll have to be short but we can reduce the precision moving mass ... maybe the tube can be longer if its warmed or have re-circulation or something.
we use "syringe pumps" a lot, basically a glass syringe with a stepper driving the plunger. If you replaced the stepper with a regular servo you could measure torque as a proxy for the chocolate properties
