3D Printed Dice Tower
I made a 3D Printed Dice Tower as a ridiculously unnecessary accessory to my board gameing hobby.
I’m a big fan of board games and what better way to keep myself entertained during lockdown than to spend ages 3D printing a new toy!? This will be all ready for when Melbourne eventually comes out of lockdown and we can have people around for board games again! (Probably around 2025 or so…)
This dice tower was designed by Lau85 and is available on Thingiverse.
I printed in PLA with “optimal” settings of 0.15mm layer height with supports only for the stairs. I could have reduced the settings to print faster but being home all day who needs fast printing speed?
The final note is that I scaled the pieces to 97% of the maximum to match the diameter of this lovely straight-sided water bottle “Alka Power Ionic Alkaline Spring Water” I found at Coles. It was surprisingly difficult to find a straight-sided water bottle to use as the container of the stairs.
This next piece was the rim to go around the plastic at the top underneath the entrance to the staircase. This had a lot of stringing between pieces which I wasn’t thrilled about but was quickly taken care of with a craft knife. I printed the top of the tower along with this rim to make sure I had the scaling right with the cut up plastic bottle and it was absolutely perfect!
With the sizing correct I continued on printing the base of the staircase. This base printed just fine without any supports.
Now for the big one I was most nervous about - the stairs needed a large amount of support as can be seen here but printed beautifully.
This side shows the stairs from the better side.
Final picture of the stairs because it worked so well. I printed with a raft to increase the adhesion to the bed.
Last to print was the base ‘catcher’ which catches the dice so they don’t go scooting across the table.
I did have a bit of a failure here where the base lifted off the bed on the side. It still fit with the rest of the print so I decided not to re-print as it still works!
I combined the whole tower including cutting down the plastic tube (the water bottle) to size. I didnt actually glue anything for the tower because I may disassemble it to paint the pieces.
The total print time was 36 hours and 24 minutes to match the excessiveness of the whole design. I’m so happy with this print which was just a bit of fun during lockdown. Now to actually be able to play some board games with people!