Word Dice

I found some dice for Word Yahtzee while browsing around, but I wasn't happy with the final result, mainly due to the lack of fillets on the edges to give that proper “dice” feel to them. These are sized at 16mm to be of a proper size so the lettering is a tight fit. I originally tried 18mm, but trying to roll 7 of them was too bulky.

As I'm new to 3D printing this seemed like a perfect opportunity to put my CAD learning into practice to make a functional game and share back with the community that has given me so many great prints to mess with. This was made in Fusion 360 and made use of parameterization.

I recommend a 100% infill to give the dice a proper weight, and using a layer height of 0.10mm to preserve the details of the lettering. Printing in PLA seems to be fine, and I can't attest for any other materials. As I don't have a dual filament printer I have tried various methods of finishing the dice and printing in different colours, if this is the route you also choose to go I have a few suggestions based on my experiments:

• Print in a dark colour that you want the letters to show up in.
• Lightly sand the faces, taking care not to remove too much material.
• Carefully paint the faces with white gesso (doubles as a dice colour and suitable primer). Try to avoid paint getting into the letters.
• Fill the letters with photopolymer resin (and cure) or clear epoxy. I highly recommend using a 1mL syringe with an adapter on the end to create a fine point for precision. I created an adapter you can quickly print in vase/spiral mode.
• Finish with clear gloss varnish. I did not get good results with the spray on kind, so I recommend taking the time to paint it on with a brush and letting each side dry before proceeding to the next.

I have also included a PDF score sheet that I created because, again, the options I could find publicly available on the internet weren't great. It also includes the letters of each dice at the bottom, as we found it makes it easier to decide if you should re-roll a dice without having to pick it up and rotate it around looking at each face.

As an open source game developer, I believe in sharing with attribution, and release all materials in this build under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license, as I do with any artistic content I create.