If you’ve been keeping an eye out for a 3D chocolate printer, you probably know that there’s currently not much on the market. Foodini is in its Kickstarter phase and the ChefBot doesn’t print in chocolate. However, the ChocaByte 3D chocolate printer that debuted at this year's CES has since been offered at a special price of US$99 on a limited run of 500 printers, before heading to mass production in its home country of Australia.
Details on the ChocaByte are currently slim and the company Solid Idea didn’t respond to inquiries. We do know that the chocolate will need to be purchased in cartridges from the company (four for $10) and the machine is supposed to be easy to work with.
The company’s library of chocolate printing templates will start in the “hundreds” and users can upload their own designs. Presumably users wouldn’t need CAD skills to benefit from the ChocaByte, and the company also plans on offering a design application for the printer.
The printed chocolates will be small with a print space of 2 x 2 x 1 in (5 x 5 x 2.5 cm), and print time is expected to be less than 10 minutes.
According to an automated email from Solid Idea, the special introductory price of $99 has already been fulfilled to 500 consumers, presumably with at least some of those consumers never having seen a final printed product. The same email offered the expectation of an official launch date of the last quarter of 2014. Limited-run printers will begin to ship in one to three months, according to the website.
Source: ChocaByte
