Making D&D Dice Towers | Table Top Games

hey i'm bob at i like to make stuff today we're gonna make dice towers [Music] not too long ago we made this awesome gaming table and one of the reasons that we made this is because we want to play dungeons and dragons as well as a bunch of other games and part of playing dungeons and dragons is rolling dice so the game comes with a bunch of different types of dice some of them roll very easily some of them do not because they're strangely shaped and so one of the things that people often do to make it easier to force these things to roll is to make a dice tower the dice tower doesn't actually do anything other than making sure that these tumble and end up on a random side they're just a fun way to roll some dice so today i'm going to make a dice tower that fits my character and then other people on the team are going to make their own and we'll show you all the different options so the first thing is to head to the shop we'll cut down some plastic to get started i've got my dice here and these were a gift from our friends at wind geeks craft they are super cool let me show them to you aren't those gorgeous they made these so big thanks to them for these awesome dice but i wanted to show you this because this is actually going to be the basis for my dice tower this is an led matrix that i'm going to hook up to a small arduino-like device and then we're going to build the tower up from these corners and make it like this so it's going to be a big clear thing that will have light come through it you can drop the dice in the top they'll roll down and then out one of the sides and so really this particular led matrix is going to be the kind of constraint that we're working around the height doesn't matter but we're going to try to line it up with these outside edges so that this gets hidden underneath the rest of the tower and so the way that i think i'm going to do that is that i need a center column that's going to come up through the middle and then an outer box like that and so i'm going to be building a ramp that will kind of go there and we'll go down and an angle and then another one here that will go down at an angle and just keep working that around i'll probably only have the dice come in from one side drop down three levels and then come out rather than try to make it keep going around [Music] [Music] it made a stick of smaller sticks so this is going to be our base well actually not the base there will be a base this will be the core and that'll go on top of it and then we'll cut some shelves some slopes some steps i don't know what they are and they're going to go on like this at this angle and one like this angle one like that angle so let me get the base so we can get this thing glued like that step one clean off the saw and by that i mean just put it on another saw [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so now i need to try to figure out the steps but the top step needs to be able to move which i have a really good idea for but the top step needs to be able to move because i want to put a little limit switch underneath the step so that that step when you drop the die onto the step it will push down on the switch which will turn on the lights and they'll do an animation while it's falling down and then will turn off so i have to be able to make that top step move a little bit so i'll figure out where it's going to go but then i'll glue the other ones in so this is a cool thing that i found on amazon years ago and i bought them just in case i would ever have a need for them and today's the day i just have to find one hour later these are acrylic hinges now the cool thing about this is that they are nice and loose they don't have holes in them for screws because they are meant to be solvent welded onto other pieces of acrylic so i've got a whole bunch of these and this is the first time i've gotten to use them [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] i'm trying to figure out uh how to start actually putting this thing together because i kind of need the sides but i also have to be able to get to the inside of it i went ahead and cut the side pieces and i did this the same width as the base so that each piece can be overlaid so i can set it right on top of there actually i need to do it a little bit short i didn't think about that it's what i meant to do eighth of an inch shorter so that you could butt them all like this and as long as the the overlap is the same on every corner then the pieces can all be the same size so i got to cut these down just a hair [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right totally works so we're just gonna make it do that a couple more times and then put some lights under it [Music] oh it kind of slides there other than rolls [Music] [Music] so i'm going to cut this little area out right here for the dye to fall out i think i'm going to try the band saw but there's a good chance that the vibration of the band saw may like crack these edges and stuff so that may not be the way to do it but i'm going to give it a shot because if it does work it will be the simplest option for cutting out a section [Music] [Applause] [Music] i added a bunch of unnecessary pieces to this just to give it more surface and all of these edges of the cut acrylic are going to catch light so when you shine light up through the middle the center piece is definitely going to catch a lot and hopefully we'll push it into all of these other pieces and there's going to be light coming from the entire bottom so hopefully it'll catch it i may have to go back and kind of frost some of these to really get light but we're at a point now where i'm ready to put in this hinged first ramp piece and again that's going to be hinged so that it can hit this limit switch like that which will trigger the lights to come on and off but ran into a small little problem in that the hinge is wider than my ramp so i'm going to try taking this to the band saw and just cutting it off hopefully it will stay intact and i can then glue it onto the ramp and glue it into place [Music] still works [Music] so i think next i'm going to temporarily put this panel in this is not going to get glued in this is the last panel it's not going to get glued in until the very very end but i need to have it in place so that i can glue the hinge to it so i know where all that's going so i know where to put the button i might need to actually oh okay so i have this other this is the same solvent uh but it's a thicker kind of gel like stuff so i think what i'll do for this is actually put a couple of dots on the back of this drop it in place and get it in the right you know position and then hold it might be easier it is a clear syrupy cement for high strength joints [Music] this video is sponsored by simply safe we are big fans of simply safe here in the office we've all got systems at home we have a system here at the building itself it's a great way to secure your home or your office 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finally figured out that a simple way to make the little button work better was to add some more weight so i tripled the piece of acrylic on the top of this so it's a little bit heavier and i've worked on the code a little bit so now when i drop the die in it triggers that button right there turns on some lights and then they turn themselves off now i still have to work on an animation to actually make the lights do what i want but it's all ready to go so now we're at a point where we need to make a base for this thing so we can hide the leds and the microcontroller inside to make a really simple case or stand for this thing i went to a website called makercase.com it's like a free website where you just put in the dimensions of the box that you want it spits out the outlines and you can send them to a laser cutter or cnc machine and cut out a box jointed box which is really really really cool and really really easy so i cut this out of black acrylic i think it'll look really good i made an opening here so that my base of my clear acrylic can set down in here and be glued in place i still have to drill a hole because i forgot to do it so that i can plug in the power on the outside but then everything else should be able to hide in this space [Music] [Music] i've got some vellum and you can kind of see through it it has some frosting and it's like a plasticky paper and so basically i'm going to cut down a square of this and put it on top of the leds to diffuse them just a little bit [Music] i've got the leds in the base now i've got the little power port stuck out here and the last thing i'm going to do is add a little chimney and the reason i'm going to do that is so that i can make sure that when i drop one of the dye it's falling in the exact right spot to hit this thing to actuate the button if you do it too high it doesn't work if you do it too low it completely misses it so i want to force it to be right in the right spot it's basically going to be more of this cutting and gluing so while i do this the rest of the team is going to start working on their dice towers [Music] [Music] so my little dice tower is finished and it turned out all right but the ones that the rest of the team made are super cool so let's look at those anthony decided to make his super mario themed so he went into fusion 360 modeled this thing from scratch printed it out and then painted it and it looks great megan wanted to do a rapunzel theme tower so she actually found a really great model by fate's end online printed that out and then spent a huge amount of time painting it adding moss and some hair and then josh took a totally different route and used some popsicle sticks and a bunch of other stuff to make one from scratch and it's a rabbit that you may recognize from monty python [Music] so there you go a bunch of different ways to make a dice tower it's an extremely simple thing in fact josh made another totally different type that works really well and looks super nice there's a million ways to do this it only has to do one thing so you can make it look however you want make it in whatever way works for you and if this gave you some ideas for one that you could make for yourself we would all love to hear about it down in the comments we've got tons of other types of projects that you may want to check out and if you're not subscribed be sure to do that as well that's it for this one thanks for watching we'll see you next time make it go like a spiral staircase but with ramps like a terrible spiral staircase terrible but basically it's like a spiral staircase on the inside of a column but a really terrible stair space i did it again what is it a terrible staircase because each one is a ramp i mean so that's how you make a dice tower that's that's really it

Channel: I Like To Make Stuff

Views: 194,857

Keywords: i like to make stuff, iliketomakestuff, diy, woodworking, metalworking, electronics, 3D printing, prop making, criticalrole, critical roll, Dice tower, D&D, DND, dungeons and dragons, harmon quest, dice, d20, making, how to, arduino, program led strip, matthew mercer, dnd dice, diy dnd dice tower, diy dice tray, dice tray, board games, dungeons and dragons dark alliance, how to build a dice tower, build a dice tower, dice towers, make your own dice tower, dungeons and dragons music

Id: 2W6MWQ4JRGU

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2022