My college had a 'rapid prototyping' machine circa 2000 that worked in paper. Roll out a layer of paper, cut through the top layer, something something glue, roll out the next layer, etc. No reason that couldn't work with aluminum foil.

I can just tell you from experience that aluminum foil is much more fragile than paper, your college might face some difficult challenges in making it work and need to rework their machine. Maybe very lightweight paper comes close, but certainly not the standard 80gsm printing paper.

I created an embossing machine than would emboss aluminum foil with the scratch marks of a teaspoon. Aluminum foil tends to get a fold rather quickly, doing that for 40m was quite a challenge.

The embossing machine: https://postimg.cc/67wkVGBy

The embossing process as GIF: https://postimg.cc/3W6zSqKx

The embossed aluminum foil as GIF: https://postimg.cc/yDh5NY0D