Hopper for Cocoa Nibs / Liquor Extraction

Chocolate making is messy business. One of the steps in nib-to-bar chocolate making is to extract the liquor from the nibs. We use a Champion Juicer.

Inevitably, when you add nibs to the chute … a lot of them fly back up the chute and land all over the kitchen.

So I built this hopper and plunger system to help. It has three parts:

  • A collar that fits on top of the chute and enables nibs to be added perpendicular to the chute..
  • A hopper that holds about a cup of nibs that are gravity-fed into the collar and chute.
  • A extended plunger to push nibs down the chute.

To operate: Lower the plunger to cover the collar opening, add nibs, lift the plunger to open the collar opening and gravity-feed some nibs, lower the plunger when the chute is part-way full. No nibs should escape.

Rendering of distinct parts.

I printed the parts on a Form Labs Form 2 SLA printer. Form Labs doesn’t make a food safe resin (though they do make dental-grade resins). In fact, I’m not aware of any food-grade resins or filaments for 3d-printing. This is a topic the Internets have a lot of opinions about. I chose to coat parts in many layers of poly-urethane, which is food-safe when fully cured.

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