Adventures in 3D Printing - migration post (24th Feb 2017)

I've been battling a bout of illness this week so my willingness to design/paint stuff has taken somewhat of a beating. The 3D tile production continues apace but the CR-10 still hasn't been fully assembled yet so once again, the Cetus has had to take up the slack. The current tile/wall count is rapidly approaching the 100 mark so I thought I'd throw something different at it that would tie it up for 5-6 hours at a time so that I didn't have to keep an eye on it.

The project I chose was a replacement for my beloved "Tower of Doom" dice tower. My original tower was made of cardstock and wasn't really meant to be anything other than a prototype for an advanced version. Trouble is, as soon as it made its first appearance at our table (playing Adventurer Conqueror King System) and was used to check for a fallen character's fate using the game's 'Mortal Wounds' table it was given it's ominous title and it stuck from that moment on. Any time the players saw me produce it, they new things could go badly (muahahaha!) Sadly, the two years that the tower was in play saw it stored in a plastic storage box along with a whole bunch of other stuff and the thin card eventually started showing signs of damage.

Rather than repair it, I thought I'd like to replace it with something more sturdy and since I have the capability to 3D print stuff... a new "Tower of Doom" was duly commissioned. The main criteria I had was that it needed to be both solid enough to withstand a lot of use and possible mistreatment when in storage, yet couldn't be too big for said storage.

I searched on Thingiverse and found several cool designs but none of them really ticked all the boxes - until I came across this one. The Three-path Dice Tower V.2 by bainite. (www.thingiverse.com/thing:1271858)

• It's designed to come apart for easy storage. (tick)
• It's well designed with lots of detail that isn't too flimsy. (tick)
• It's fully customisable - you can change the surface textures easy enough and the cross motif at the top can be replaced with something else, such as our gaming club's logo. (bonus tick)
• And it is designed to be quickly and firmly assembled using magnets. (double bonus tick!)

Here it is hot-off-the-printer in it's five core pieces (base, middle, crenellated top and two side chutes) ready to have the magnets installed. This is kind of a prototype - I may change the surface texture again and will definitely be swapping out the cross for our logo, but considering that these were printed using the Cetus' standard 0.4mm nozzle at 0.2mm layer height with a 13% infill, I'm more than happy with the results so far.

Here's the assembled prototype tower. I'll probably do a quick paint job on it once I feel better, just to see how the surface textures hold up. For now however, the thought of having to clean the odd layer line and prep it/prime and paint it all just can't break through how crappy I feel.

Maybe next week.

---

It took longer than I expected to be able to finish the paint job on the new 'Tower of Doom' but at least it's all done ready for use in my next lot of Adventurer Conqueror King games at my gaming club, W.A.R.P.