CIFT Assists BeeHex with Product Development for 3D Printing

Located in Columbus, Ohio, BeeHex is a NASA spin-off company. Since 2017 the company has designed and built autonomous bakery equipment, secured three patents, and immersed its team in the food production industry with a focus on 3D food printing, robotics and machine learning. BeeHex's equipment allows bakeries to produce decorated cookies, cakes, cupcakes and more with high speed precision - for any scale - from small to large bakeries. Additionally, BeeHex is developing a system with the U.S. Army to produce personalized nutrition bars. The company has nine employees. 

BeeHex received grant funding from the U.S. Army to help them design a ready-to-eat food production system for forward-base camps utilizing their 3D-printing technology. BeeHex reached out to CIFT, part of the Ohio MEP and the MEP National Network™, for assistance with the development of the nutritional bar. BeeHex's overarching goal was to be able to provide customized macronutrient and micronutrient content in each individual bar.

CIFT was able to develop a bar that was capable of providing customized nutrition to meet BeeHex's objective. Separately-flavored materials with high concentrations of different macronutrients and micronutrients were utilized to accomplish this individual. These materials were also designed to have the proper viscosity characteristics to be printable on BeeHex's equipment. Additionally, the amount of each material in each bar could be varied to provide a customized nutritional profile.