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I know most DIYers consider the Dremel a God Tool, but is there any cheaper alternative ?

I'm afraid that I think that the Dremel is cheap, and poorly made, and that its accessories are not up to anything but light hobby usage.

Having said that --- I'm glad that I have one, and a boxfull of bits and pieces for it. When it is useful it is really useful!

I think that the designers are trying to do their best to put the metal where the strain comes, thus making for a strong and reliable tool. The simplest possible spanner is cut or punched out of a sheet of steel and has very little resistance to bending/deforming: the "real thing" is forged and very much stronger, not only for the 3-d shape, as compared to the flat metal, but also because (I think...) it is done in such a way that the molecules of steel "flow" into the shape. Engineers? I need help here :)

@Thad - Yes I'm seeing the point on "metal were the strain comes"; if it were that way, then why not make all the spanners as shown in pic 5? Assuming that 5 to be most strongest in the lot. Why have different variants?

I would have guessed at number 2 being the strongest, and that the stress would be greatest inside that red oval.

As I said... we need an engineer on this one!

Dremel is a useful tool and it is not that cheap in pricing. It is useful for light but precision jobs. Not built for anything which needs torque and pressure. Just does it's job due to high rpm opertation. If not used correctly (and patiently), bits will just fly off in pieces.

I have a 7.2Volts one. I regret not buying a mains driven now. Battery is very poor, lasts not more than 10 minutes of usage on a 3 hours recharge .

At Rs. 10,000+, it's cheap ?

There are 2 parts to this.

1. The smooth transition (curved "fillet") from the head (part that grips the nut / bolt-head) to the shaft is present in all of them. If the transition is not smooth, i.e. if there is a sharp transition at that point (like 2 lines meeting at an angle), the head will snap off the shaft very easily when force is applied at the other end of the shaft

2. The head thickness (where the head would make contact with the nut/bolt-head) is different in each of them. If this is part is thin, there is more of a tendency to cut the nut/bolt-head since the contact area is small. Spanners 2 and 4 would be better than the others in this regard

Point taken! But I don't think I paid that much for mine.

I do not know about now, but when I got mine there was only the base model available: I would have liked one of the higher models.

One of the things about Dremel is the poor quality of the boxes and kits: they barely survice display in the shops! This is not the sort of thing one would expect of Bosch, where both tools and cases would take a fair amount of bashing.

I have a Braun hand-held mixie in the kitchen: it is more powerful than my Dremel!

An Aside: Safety Message...

Dremel kits make it very easy to do odd bots of cutting and grinding. I beg that members never do such work without Eye Protection. cut-off wheels break quite easily; grinding points may look tough, but can shatter. It only takes a moment to loose your sight, and you will not even see it coming

It's as easy as keeping the safety goggles on top of your Dremel box!

Very valid point you have raised Thad E. Being careless, once I had a chance to get blinded while sharpening a knife with a grinding wheel, one small piece of metal stung just above my left eye:Shockked:. Needless to say without any safety goggles and I would say it was a narrow escape.

Thad, Dremel rotary tools have abosulutely no torque, i suppose it is like that by design. It works on it's high rpm operation and not be torque and pressure. Hand mixie must be much more powerful than any dremel rotary. But check the rpm.

Thanks for the caution on eye protection.

Yes... I used to have a professional "pendant" drill when I made jewellery as a hobby. A commercial motor with a flexible drive, handset, and foot-pedal switch. It was much, much more grunt than my dremel --- although not as portable!

I learnt one of my eye-safety lessons the hard way: never cut anything, or in any other way push/pull a sharp tool towards you. The spike with which I was opening a sack slipped and I went exactly next to my eye. The actual damage was negligable; the near miss had me feeling shaky for the rest of the day.

Breaks my heart, that one. I looked up to the Dremel as the tool designed by the DIY God himself. But I don't think there's another tool that offers the innumerable attachments that Dremel does, and is of a better quality.....or is there ?

You made jewelery ? Got any pic you can post ? Wow....not that I'm a fan of jewelery(:P), but to have the skill to work matter in such small quantities...I was always fascinated by metalworking.

If I understood right, breaks the spanner?

If I understood right, breaks the octangon shape of the bolt to round making impossible for the spanner to remove it?

going off topic... ;) but still tool-related!

Yes, but only as a hobby. Was never much of a designer, used to regard it more like engineering in miniature. I only did one year of metalwork at school (left me with a still-unfulfilled desire to own a lathe!) and it made me want to do some work in silver. More than a decade after, I started buying the necessary tools, and ended up with what a couple of pro friends of mine thought was an enviable workshop! Of course, there was always more to want, and any profit I made tended to go to the toolshop.

I still have some small handtools, but no longer have most of my stuff. Also, one looses the knack: the first time I ever made a plain silver band ring, it took me about three evenings. Later, I could knock out a wedding ring in an hour or two. Now I'd be back to struggling. Muscle memory, I think they call it --- and it is not permanent. Soldering was the real magic thing: brazing, red hot, with silver or gold solder, and watching it flow. A friend once told me that she was always a little bit thrilled by this, even though she had been in the real pro trade for years!

It's 15 or 20 years back, now, and I never kept any pics, I'm afraid.

Among my favourite tools (apart from the flexible drive!)... a tiny hammer that I thought was going to be useless, but had a lot of use; a hand drill that I'll post a pic of as it is almost impossible to put into words how it works; the tapered steel rod that one uses (with a rawhide mallet) to make a ring round, and stretch it to size.

I'm useless at wordwork... but I did make myself a proper jeweller's bench, with a curved section cut out.

The guys that I'm most in awe of: engravers. Not the ones that do it by machine (though that is far from easy) but the ones who use hand tools. It is very, very difficult: they make it look like writing with a pencil.

Another guy you may think more of after doing this kind of work: your dentist! Medical man, engineer, sculptor --- and all inside your mouth.

If I am not wrong with my experiences with the open end spanners, the #2 is the best of the combo, strength to weight! Well trial & error makes R&D!:)