Dice Dozer!

That's right, wonderful people, another way to roll dice, this time with an even more gratuitously over-engineered, print-in-place, support-free mechanism!

Press the paddle at the back and the tray tilts forward, driven internally by a pair of geared wheels.  Pinch the paddle back up against the upper handle and the tray returns to horizontal once more.  

Now, the whole appeal of the gearing thing goes back to the Linkage Crate.  I really like having the movement of one element drive another element at a different speed, and over a different distance.  While the linkage crate used struts and pivots to achieve that, the Dice Dozer uses some fairly obvious gears that are attached to the parts in question.

You won't be surprised to hear that this came close to being this month's abandoned failure!  Early versions suffered from binding if the bottom layer wasn't perfect, and the size of the gears needed a bit of experimentation, but it all came together successfully.  Actually, I don't think I had a complete disaster this month, which is almost disappointing!  I'll try harder next month... 😜 

Printing Tips

As with any print-in-place articulated design you'll want to make sure your bottom layer is nice and neat, and that there aren't any print issues like stringing or overextrusion that might cause binding between moving parts.  

The whole thing prints assembled, on its side like so:

File Location

You'll find this on dropbox under 795 Dice Dozer

(dropbox post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/31697592 )

Final Thoughts

While this is called "Dice Dozer" there are probably other similarly gratuitous uses to which it could be put.  I mostly just love the dynamics of things that are subject to gravity, whether dice or something else.

Hmm... I wonder if this kind of thing could be used to start a marble run.... 

xoxo

Sven.