Dremel drills into 3D printing

JOHN DAVIDSON
18 SEP 2014
AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW

Every hobbyist’s favourite brand of tiny tools, Dremel, has got into 3D printing just in time for Christmas.
It’s announced the $US999 3D Idea Builder, a printer that will take 3D models that hobbyists have cooked up in Autodesk’s 123D design software, and turn them into hunks of plastic in a jiffy.
One, very long jiffy, if the Dremel is just as slow as all the other 3D printers on the market.
But still, the technology is fun and pretty amazing, even if the gratification isn’t quite instant. It has practical applications around the house, too (or at least, that’s what you can tell Santa). If, say, you lose a piece of your favourite chess set, you can just print out a new piece rather than buy a whole new set.
Why, at $US999 ($1103), the printer could pay for itself it a matter of decades!
At $US999, Dremel’s new 3D printer is cheaper than MakerBot’s Replicator Mini, which sells for around $US1300 in the US, or around $2000 here thanks to the Australia tax. Just what the Dremel 3D printer will cost when it lands here remains to be seen, however. It might be cheaper to buy it from the US.
Or, rather, it almost certainly will be cheaper to buy it from the US. Whether it’s better to buy it from the US is what we’ll have to wait and see.
The 3D Idea Builder can make plastic models up to 230mm wide, 150mm deep and 140mm high, at a “best-in-class” print resolution of 100 microns. Just what class Dremel is referring to isn’t immediately obvious. Cubify does a $US1099 Cube 3D printer with a resolution of 70 microns in slow mode, or 200 microns in fast mode.
Still, even at 100 microns, I’d kill for one of these this Christmas. Santa, are you listening?
Santa? Hello?