3D Printed Extremely Portable Dice Tray

What is this?

This is an extremely portable dice tray (not to be confused with dice box) that is able to be easily 3D printed. The portability is achieved through splitting the tray into multiple panels that take very little time to assemble. This means that the panels for the entire tray can most likely fit inside a large Ziploc bag if needed.

Is it easy to print?

Yes! This dice tray is able to be 3D printed without any supports as long as your printer bridges well. I recommend using PLA as the filament as this dice tray requires no material strength and needs to be bridged well.

How much does it cost to print this?

From filament alone, with 20% infill and 3 perimeters, this project uses around 250-300g of filament, which means that if a 1kg spool is $20, this project would cost around $5-6 of raw material.

How did you design this?

I used a combination of Tinkercad and Fusion 360 to design this project. I started with Tinkercad but was not able to print a successful prototype due to me not being able to visualize accurate dimensions in Tinkercad, so I decided to switch to Fusion 360 later on.

The switch to Fusion 360 helped to speed up this project immensely, but Tinkercad helped me draft the original idea.

Supplies

You'll need:

• A suitable 3D printer
• More than 300g of rigid filament, preferably PLA.

The 3D printer must be decent at bridging and printing dimensionally accurate parts.

Step 1: Design Process - Tinkercad Design - Introduction

In this project, I started the design in Tinkercad because of how easy it is to visualize designs. I was able to create the rough idea, but unfortunately because of the lack of the dimensions tool crucial to this project, I switched to Fusion 360 in the end.

However, I will demonstrate the basic idea of this project through Tinkercad, which you may recreate on your own based on your ideas.

You DO NOT have to go through the design process to make the dice tray, refer to step 15 for the STL files.

Step 2: Design Process - Tinkercad - a Basic Box

Most of the design is done in Fusion 360, however, to visualize the project, we start with a basic box of 120x120mm. This is the overall size of each panel, which means that a combination of four panels will result in a 240x240mm rolling area dice box.

Step 3: Design Process - Tinkercad - Pattern

The first image demonstrates the attachment cutout patterns of each panel. There are three cutouts and one "arm" in each panel. This pattern means that a total of three objects (in this case, 2 walls and one regular panel) can be attached to this panel, and in addition, this panel can be attached to another panel. This may sound confusing but is actually really simple once we visualize it.

The result of this pattern is shown in picture two.

You may notice that I included no instructions on how to make this pattern, this is because the exact dimensions of the pattern will be shown in the next section.

Step 4: Design Process - Tinkercad - Walls

The wall is a simple design as well. It uses the same attachment pattern for its "arm", and thus uses the "arm" to attach to each of the panels.

Each wall is 50mm tall.

Step 5: Design Process - Tinkercad - Done

With this amazing 3D view, we can visualize how the final product is going to look like. And now that we're done with the design concepts, we can move into Fusion 360 for the actual design.

Step 6: Design Process - Fusion 360 - Panels - Introduction

Moving into Fusion 360, these are the panels that attach to each other, and there are four panels in total.

Step 7: Design Process - Fusion 360 - Panels - Base

Now let's get to the actual design process.

1. We start off with creating a sketch on the XY plane.
2. Draw 120x120mm rectangle.
3. Extrude the sketch by 3mm upwards as a new body.

Step 8: Design Process - Fusion 360 - Panels - Cutout Pattern

Ah yes, the moment you've been waiting for. The dreaded cutout pattern...

1. Create a sketch on the bottom of the base we created in the last step.
2. Follow the sketch shown in the first picture to create the cutout pattern. While it may look complicated, the core idea behind it is actually quite simple.
3. After the cutout pattern is drawn, double check the dimensions. Once that's done, extrude the shown parts by 2mm upwards in the cut operation.

Step 9: Design Process - Fusion 360 - Panels - Arms

Now for the arms. The idea is the same, except now the pattern is drawn outside of the box.

1. Create a sketch on the bottom of the base again.
2. Draw the sketch shown in the first picture.
3. Extrude the selected areas up by 1.8mm in the join operation. (the reason why it says -1.8mm is because the sketch is drawn upside down, thus the software thinks that we're extruding in the negative direction)

You have now completed the panel.

Step 10: Design Process - Fusion 360 - Walls - Introduction

The walls go around the box and are 50mm tall. They attach to panels similar to how panels attach to each other.

Step 11: Design Process - Fusion 360 - Walls - Base

1. Create a sketch on the XY plane.
2. Draw a 120mmx2mm rectangle.
3. Extrude the sketch by 50mm.

This is the "main" part of the wall.

Step 12: Design Process - Fusion 360 - Walls - Arm

These are the arms that attach to the panels.

1. Create a sketch on the bottom of the box we created in the previous step.
2. Draw the sketch like shown and double check the dimensions after it's done.
3. Extrude the sketch by 1.8mm upwards in the join operation.

Step 13: Design Process - Fusion 360 - Walls - Support

These are in fact optional, but they help with the rigidity of the walls.

1. Create a sketch on the bottom of the wall.
2. Draw two 25x2mm rectangles and place them like shown.
3. Extrude those rectangles by 50mm upwards, matching with the wall height.
4. Create a 25x50mm chamfer on the places shown using the chamfer tool, and make sure that that the chamfer type is selected as "two distance".

You have now completed designing the dice tray.

Step 14: Assembly - Design Files

Attached are the design files for this project. They are all subject to change as there may be improvements to be made.

"Main piece" is referred to as panels in this instructable.

Step 15: Assembly - 3D Printing

Attached are the STL files.

This is how the parts should be oriented. They should be oriented the right way by default.

You will need a total of four panels and eight wall pieces to create a full dice tray.

No support is needed if your printer bridges well.

Add lots of elephant foot compensation if your printer is prone to producing elephant's foot!

Step 16: Assembly - Video Animation

The assembly is self-explanatory. Assembly is just as easy as it looks.

Step 17: How to Use

When the dice tray is in storage or not used, simply stack the panels and the walls. This ability to be stacked is what makes this dice tray so portable.

When you assemble the dice tray, simply place down the panels and connect the arms with their notches like shown (do this the right side up like in the animation in the previous step). The pieces may or may not lock in with a click depending on your printer's tolerance (both are fine as long as there isn't too much difficulty assembling or too much wobble). If you are unable to insert the arms, check for any elephant's foot on the printed object and remove any extra material that may block the arms from being inserted into the notch.

Overall, this should be a pretty easy to design, easy to print, and easy to use dice tray.

Step 18: Conclusion

I'm glad you read this instructable! A video is coming up with me using the dice tray, though my 3D printer has not been cooperating lately :(.

Anyways, thanks for reading and have a nice day!