Gamesbyjames dicebox how to#
Gamesbyjames dicebox software#

In your project design, create a template to drill three holes at the left and right edges of your piece. On the right side of the workpiece, I drilled the screw holes near the top and bottom corners. For my layout, I placed the screws to be approximately at the middle of the left side of the piece. The dowel holes will take care of the alignment, so you can be a bit sloppy where you drill the screw holes. You don't need to have the screw hole locations perfectly placed. Drilling and countersinking the screw holes is critical to prevent you from you straining or even splitting your workpiece. Place your workpiece on top of the sacrificial board, drill and countersink screw holes, and then attach it using woodworking screws. This piece needs to be firmly attached to your CNC base during the entire carve of the project. The best way that I have found to do this is to create a sacrificial alignment board to place under the piece you are carving. Creating three-dimensional two-side projects might seem a bit daunting at first, but it turns out that your machine can do this easily as long as you use a few tricks for aligning your wood and your design when you carve the backside. The majority of CNC projects are one-sided signs or cutouts of projects from larger sheets of wood. I wanted to spend a few paragraphs on the principles of the project before we get into the harder details. Ok - roll for initiative, and then let's get started.ДЄ key element in the design of this project was creating two-sided CNC carvings.

Laptop to program the CNC, 3d printer, and design the circuit board.

Gamesbyjames dicebox software#

Fusion 360, Eagle, and Inventables Easel software.3d printer for creating the electronics frame.Hand drill with countersink and Phillips #2 bit.

X-carve CNC machine with a 1/4, 1/8, and 1/32 inch bit to carve the box.

There are a lot of different options for reproducing this project, but for my design I used: The CNC design is available through the Inventable's Easel at: Hopefully, the tutorials on the process will provide some inspiration for you to create something similar for your gaming table.ДЄll the files for the project are available at: Using a different set of programmable led's or even a small backlight screen would work well as an alternative to soldering a printed circuit board. You could, for example, use a 3d printer instead of a CNC machine for the box construction. You can (and should) modify the different aspects of the project to suit your abilities, time, and interest.

Mounting and connecting the electronics.

A layer of epoxy on the outside of the lid that fills in the gaps between the wood.Дoing this carve took a bit of experimentation, but I think the results were worth the effort.

A layer of epoxy inside the lid that provides a foundation for the delicate carve.

Doing this involved a two-sided CNC carve with two epoxy pours: I think my favorite innovation in the project was developing a technique to create a delicate carved wooden pattern in a translucent lid.

I decided to embed programmable LEDs into a carved wooden dicebox, and then create a translucent carved cover to reveal the lights within. After some experimentation, I found that programmable LEDs shining through transparent acrylic dice could produce beautiful colored designs.

Gamesbyjames dicebox how to#

As I was building them, I started thinking about how to modify the design to be a bit more magical. Because I have a CNC machine, I decided to make a few of these boxes as gifts for my friends. Although others have reproduced them, this is still the go-to place to find these beautiful boxes. Naturally, I started thinking about D&D projects I could make in my shop.ДЄ few years ago, the people at Elderwood Academy created CNC carved hexagonal boxes for D&D dice. Besides being an excellent game, playing gives me a chance to hang out with some dear friends who live in another state. After a long absence, I started playing again a few years ago through Roll20. I started playing D&D in the 1970s with high school friends.