The Dice-O-Matic Geared Dice Roller!

Hey there, wonderful people!

Dice rolling got you down?  Need to add some excitement, dynamism and, well, gears?!  Then this is the model for you!  Load your dice into the top hopper, turn the side handle and hear the dice fall into a lower scoop.  Now turn the handle back the other way and behold as the dice rattle forth into the tray in a display of glorious randomness!

Yes, it's a dice tower/roller/thingy that incorporates all sorts of moving parts!  Two separate scoops are connected to a central handle in a 2:1 gear ratio so that a half turn of the handle imparts a quarter turn to the scoops.  The scoops in turn are oriented out of phase with each other so that when the upper scoop begins to spill the dice into the innards of the Dice-O-Matic, the lower scoop approaches a horizontal position to catch them.  Turning the handle back the other way returns the upper scoop to the ready position once more while simultaneously delivering the dice from the lower scoop into an angled tray at the front of the whole thing.

And, of course, it all prints assembled, with no supports required :D

This is one of those models that went on forever with prototypes (I'll write about that a bit more in the end-of-month post I have half-done), but it wasn't anything to do with the gearing and the motion.  Rather, it was all about the potential fall paths of the dice internally.  There were so many little spots where a die could get jammed, or remain sitting on a flat surface, and most of the troubleshooting effort went to resolving those without compromising the way the gearing worked and the scoops rotated.

This is one that really needs a visual demonstration - I'll pop a video up on Instagram (@Clockspring3D) shortly!

Printing Tips

No supports required!  As always with articulated models, make sure your bottom layer is dialled in, and that there are no print artifacts like stringing or overextrusion that might cause moving parts to bind together!

This is a pretty big print!  However, this model uses the same 0.5mm tolerance as usual, so if you've successfully scaled down any of the other mechanical models, this one should likewise be scalable, too.  Of course, you still want to be able to fit dice in there, though :)

The orientation of the model is side-down for printing, like this:

File Location

You'll find this on Dropbox under 779 Geared Dice Roller

(Dropbox link post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/dropbox-and-are-31697592 )

Further Thoughts

It goes without saying that this is my favourite dice roller so far, and not just because it has the most hexagons on it :P  Tactile, engaging machines are just hard not to love!  That said, this is a huge print in the scheme of things - I wonder if I could make something just as fun that's much smaller?...

xoxo

Sven.