How To (and how not to) Laser Cut Chocolate

I'm back! After a bit of a respite from posting (because I ran out of projects to share), I recently got myself a nice cheap Chinese laser cutter. So I can work on projects again!

My latest project was figuring out how to laser cut chocolate well enough that you could build models out of it, which I did figure out!

So how do you do it? It took me quite a few tries (7 to be exact) before I figured out a way that I was happy with. Below, I will detail the process that you can go through to successfully laser cut chocolate.

When preparing the file that you will cut:

-Be aware that there is a limit to how small you can cut pieces. The smaller the piece, the less detail you will be able to cut, and more of the piece will be out of temper (which means it will be harder to work with when assembling because it will have a lower melting temp). The smaller parts of the dinosaur model that I cut were about the limit that I could work with any reliability at all.
-Be aware of lines that are close to each other, as heat from the laser will melt an area, and can affect how the other line(s) will cut. For example, the teeth in the mouth of the dinosaur were pretty melted because of all of the lines in close proximity.

When preparing the chocolate to be cut

-Wax paper works great for creating the sheets of chocolate, as it helps you flatten it, and also serves as a (decent) protective buffer when laser cutting. It also helps hold in the shape of the chocolate when laser cutting. But it can be a pain to peel off.
-Tempering the chocolate doesn't help when laser cutting but it does help when you handle it afterwards. The easiest way I found to create sheets of tempered chocolate, was to have chocolate chunks that are already tempered, and then microwaving it until just melted, which will keep it in temper (you can find basic instructions in the steps above or better instructions elsewhere online).
-Adding a thickener like starch is basically necessary for laser cutting. This increases the viscosity of the chocolate and will help produce cleaner cuts. I found that 1 teaspoon of starch per 50 grams of chocolate was about the minimum that produced clean cuts for me.
-In general, the darker the chocolate, the better it will naturally cut.

When laser cutting the chocolate

-Somewhat counter-intuitively, I found that cutting slow worked better than cutting fast. I believe this worked because it burns the edges of the chocolate/starch mix, preventing flow, and any flow that does get into the cut is pushed out because the laser was moving slow enough.
-The settings I used for my 50 W laser cutter were 5 mm/s at 20% power.

When assembling:

-The edges are out of temper, and so needs to be treated with care (it will have a tendency to melt in your hands). Assembling in a cold environment helps with this.
-You can use melted chocolate to help weld pieces together. And if a piece breaks, you can try to weld it back together using melted chocolate.

And a final important question that should be answered. How does it taste? If you're eating along the edge, you can taste the burned parts, and it reminds me of burnt chocolate chip cookies. So while not wholly unpleasant, laser cutting does negatively affect the taste of parts of the chocolate.

And that's how you can laser cut and build a model out of chocolate. That is, until it falls over...

Thanks for reading! If you're interested in learning more about this, you can also find instructions on my post at Instructables.com and also in the video I made below.