Just a 'Hi' as I'm new here. Also a comment about multi-colour printing.

[curious aardvark]

what's hard about a tetrahedron ?

[Mebyon]

what's hard about a tetrahedron ?

Werl.... Tinkercad has one but it's oriented in a strange way so I'd probably find it easier to recreate from scratch. But the biggest problem will be to colour two of the vertexes differently from the other two. Tingiverse has an Ur game with tetrahedron dice but they just have recessed dimples for the coloured tips. As you know I'm trying to avoid using acrylic paint to get round problems with colouring these things so, although I could nick those dice, they're not going to cut the mustard for me. Also, if you watched the longer video i linked to earlier, the tetrahedral dice are a pain to pick up off the board; sticks would be easier to play with I think.

I think the idea of using sticks blackened on one side will do the business and are actually found with some Ur sets so are not too far from the original design.

The playing pieces are yet another little conundrum. I'd like them decorated top and bottom; maybe a black set and a white set, each decorated with inset gold dots. I reckon we're talking about five or six stl files but that's something for me to look forward to!

Best,

Chris

[curious aardvark]

well depending on how youy want to do it.
make a solid tetrahedron, with recessed panes, then print 3 coloured triangles and glue them in.

The base tetrehedron colour would be the colour of the bottom face.
Otherwise you have some fairly dodgy bridging on the base - although it does depend how large the 'dice' are.

I'm shocked you'd wimp out on something like the dice :-)

[Mebyon]

well depending on how youy want to do it.
make a solid tetrahedron, with recessed panes, then print 4 coloured triangles and glue them in.

The base tetrehedron colour would be the colour of the bottom face.
Otherwise you have some fairly dodgy bridging - although it does depend how large the 'dice' are.

I'm shocked you'd wimp out on something like the dice :-)

Me! Wimp out! Wash your mouth out with soap!

I'm tempted by your idea of gluing 'biscuits' into the sides but that feels a bit like a cop-out. I can use the now well tried business of laying multiple layers to create a solid coloured die but, because the tips would be maybe ten layers deep, that's pushing twenty gcode files. Currently I'm working on the stick dice just to get a playable game up and running. Possibly #2 will have the tetrahedral dice but the difficulty involved with handling that shape will still be there. As they say here in Portugal, vamos ver.

The playing counters are coming along nicely. The white ones are no trouble at all but the current black ones will need a white infill to get round the translucency of my white filament. I'm toying with the idea of ordering one of those packs of filament samples for 3d pens just to get a whole range of colours to try out. A typical colour layer needs just 10 cm of filament off a i kg reel and having loads of colours may be fun anyway. The snag, of course, is that I have to order from Amazon, (very few 3d printer suppliers out here in the sticks), and Amazon takes over a month to deliver 'non-essential' supplies. Maybe this project will have to go on the back-burner for a while.

But I'll press on with the stick dice and post sample stl files as they get developed. There's a tiny adjustment needed to the interlock on the right-hand set I linked to. Nothing major but I'd like to get a good fit there before moving on to the box that will eventually form the base of the board.

Anyway, having loads of fun here. I'll be back with more news if/when the project progresses.

Best,

Chris

[EvaaWilli]

Hello to you too!

[Mebyon]

Hello to you too!

Hi there!! :some sort of wavy hand smiley goes in here but I have no idea how to do that.:

Have you tried printing any of that Ur stuff yet? I hope, later this evening. to upload the Ur_bits stl file to DropBox. That has the stick dice and the playing counters. It even has a tetrahedral die especially for a certain Curious Aardvark who practically challenged me to design one! That I haven't printed off as yet as I really wanted to get this lot into a playable game before venturing too far.

Let me know how/if you're getting on.

Best,

Chris

[Mebyon]

Hi there folks.

Here's the last bit of the UR game.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q7jlzl3eba..._bits.stl?dl=0

This has the counters and two versions for the dice.

Counters: Don't forget to make the Z-hop distance at least 4mm to clear the already-printed counters when you come to slice the top layer- Otherwise no real bother with these; maybe choose your most opaque filament for the dots.

Dice:
Tetrahedal ones. I can't find a way to print these at all. Using the two stl files I have included simply knocks the smaller 'pips' off because the nozzle is too blunt to lay the first layer abutting the existing layer. It would be possible to print by laying one layer at a time and changing colours as you go but that would a) need about thirty or forty separate stl files and b) would be both boring and very nerdy!
I've given you a set of four plain tetrahedra to print and then you can just paint the tips of two vertices a contrasting colour. But this, to my mind, is cheating! Any ideas how to print these pesky things?

'Sticks': These are what I will use. Easy to print and examples have been found from antiquity so we're OK on that front.

Another reason for not using the tetrahedral dice is that I plan to make a drawer in the base to hold the bits. The counters and flat dice will fit into a neat 10mm thick base but we'd need something about 40mm thick to take the tetrahedral dice. Ugly to my mind.

That's IT for this project folks. It's been a lot of fun and I really hope that someone will give these models a whirl and make improvements to the prints. Thanks for your time.

Chris.

Hmmm. What now? A brilliant blue butterfly box? Maybe a better dog-tag for Jack my mutt; the one he's wearing is brass and nasty! I'd quite like to explore the idea of using svg images so a photo of a blue butterfly may be the next project. After all, I now have four different shades of blue to play with!

[petermessi]

Hi Chris,

Welcome to this forum and nice to meet you. i am here to gain knowledge about multicolor printing with the help of you.