Thor Yeary Final Project: Mixed Techniques

Process:


I began my process by trying to create the general shape of what I wanted my dice tower to look like. I created 3 cylinders, each one smaller than the one below it. I then cut out a hole in the center of the cylinders to create the hole in which the dice would fall through, taking extra care to make the hole large enough for most dice to be able to fit in it. I then cut a square opening for the dice to be able to come out of, and a small ramp that leads the propels the dice from in the tower to out through the square opening. Using the sketch tool, I drew two slits on the bottom of the model to make room for the walls that the tower would connect to. Once I made sure the slits were the right size, I cut them into the model. 

I printed this version out as a test, and found that the dice weren't coming out at a very high velocity, it was quite underwhelming. To fix this, I made the ramp more steep, and made the square opening a bit taller so that there wouldn't be so much clattering around, allowing the dice to jump out sooner. I also used the emboss tool to create a brick pattern on the tower. and added did a lot of playing around with the sketch tool and circular pattern tool to finish the top. I then made the walls to be laser cut using the sketch tool as well, trying ensuring they were sized proportionally to the tower, and also engraved the same brick pattern onto them. The only adjustment I made to the final version was to cut a small piece of foam to dampen the speed (and sound) of the dice as they come out, to ensure they don't jump out of the walls I created





Result:

My biggest issue I was having with my initial prototype is that the dice would more so fall out of the tower rather than being shot out like I wanted. Figuring out how to fix that was easy, but figuring out how to fix my next version was much more difficult. The dice were shooting out so fast that they would bounce over the walls I created. I really did not want to change the way my walls were, because I liked that they weren't long, meaning they wouldn't take up much table space. They were also short enough that you could see the dice without having to go out of your way and look over the tray like you do with most dice trays. In my mind, my only solution was to modify the tower itself. 

I started to wonder if I should go back into Fusion and create another version where the ramp wasn't so steep, causing the dice to not come out so fast. However, I figured there was no easy was to measure how exactly steep the ramp needed to be, without creating many different prototypes, and I didn't feel like that would be an efficient use of my time. Instead, I put foam on the ramp and just above the opening to slow dice the dice as they fall ever so slightly. This helped a huge amount, with the dice jumping out extremely rarely. The only downside to this change was that some very large dice would no longer fit in the tower, but it was a compromise I was willing to make. 


Reflection:

Through this project, I learned a lot about the importance, as well as challenges, of prototyping. You can learn so much about your build through prototyping, but there's only so many prototypes you can make in a given timeframe. I could dozens of copies of my project in Fusion with varying ramp angles, but in reality, it would take me countless hours to print out each of those models. This would be a something extremely important to figure out perfect if I wanted to sell this item. However, since this dice tower is just for me, I'm okay with making simpler adjustments that feel like an efficient use of my time.

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