Engraving custom dice?

[John Warren]

I do not have a laser (yet), but will likely be getting one in the near future. I've been digging through the wealth of information on this forum for a couple weeks now as I think through my options and the different projects I'm planning to use it for. I've found the answers to most of my questions (and some questions I wouldn't have even known to ask). But I do still have a question or two about one potential project.


I know dice are smaller and more fiddley than most of you probably work with, but I was wondering if anyone had ever created a rig to help turn a batch of dice in the engraver so you don't have to do it individually by hand?

I'm trying to work out how something like that might work in my mind - but figured if someone else has done it before me I might as well learn from them (forum and Google searches didn't help). Turning a row at a time (or all rows at once with a set of gears) shouldn't be too complex - the last two sides are where the mechanics get more complicated, but I still feel like it should be achievable.

How much clearance is there between the surface of the material (acrylic in this case) and the laser head as it moves?

Also, other than the obviously mechanical issues, are there any issues I might be overlooking from the perspective of working with the laser (or anything else)?

I'm looking at an 80-100W Shenhui if that makes a difference (but I'm not 100% set on that).


Thanks in advance for the help and for the wealth of information I've already been sifting through on this forum!

[David Rust]

Hi John,

Interesting question... If your going to do production. like many dice at once, you may consider running a batch of as many dice as you can get in a row... say 30 dice lined up. The engraver works much like a printer, it scans back and forth along the x-axis. The more items you can get per row will help with efficiency. As far a a gizmo to rotate the dice, well you could stack them and rotate to get 4 of the 6 sides, however the stack might get tricky if you have more than a few die stacked. It would probably be quicker to make a template of say 6 rows of 30 dice per row, set up the software so that after the first row is engraved you manually turn each die into the next row that is set up to do the next number and then populate the first row with new dice then keep the cycle going. A deliberate turn from row to row for the first 4 sides and then a deliberate turn for side 5 and 6 will eliminate trying to figure out which side of the dice to engrave next... might be like row1-to-row2 roll down , row2-to-row3 roll down, ect.. then row4-to-row5 roll down and rotate left, and so on...

I think a gizmo to rotate all six sides into the correct engraving position would be a cool science project for one die, but probably not very practical for production...

my 2 cents!

[Dee Gallo]

I've done dice, using a template I made from MDF. It's easy, but time consuming to turn all the dice each x 5. But it is not only possible, but also you can make some pretty cool custom dice. If course, you won't get the same shaped pip on "real" dice, unless you make the dots 3-d. You focus at 2" away from the surface on an Epilog.

Welcome to the Creek, John, you'll find plenty of inspiration here!

cheers, dee

[John Warren]

Yeah, if I can't figure out a mechanism to make it more efficient, I'm thinking a simple template with spacing and rows on it will work for manual turning. They need to be spaced because dice generally aren't sized/shaped accurately enough to reliably just butt them up against each other and expect the design to be centered on each one (except for casino dice which have a high standard).

I may be chasing a wild goose here, but I feel like there should be a way to turn rows at a time mechanically so you're not handling each individual die 6 times. If possible, it should shave a fair amount of time off of production... but as you said, it gets trickier after the 4th side because you have to turn on a different axis.


I've done dice, using a template I made from MDF. It's easy, but time consuming to turn all the dice each x 5. But it is not only possible, but also you can make some pretty cool custom dice. If course, you won't get the same shaped pip on "real" dice, unless you make the dots 3-d. You focus at 2" away from the surface on an Epilog.

Welcome to the Creek, John, you'll find plenty of inspiration here!

cheers, dee

Thanks Dee! When you talk about the shape of the pip, you mean how it's kinda concave on most dice? I don't think that would generally be a problem for what I'm thinking of doing, but how hard is it to make a smooth concaved engraving like that?

I've already found a ton of useful information here that I'm trying to file away for future reference (so I don't get too distracted thinking about all the possibilities at once lol). This seems like a very helpful community of people here too.

[Gary Hair]

I would come up with a fixture that would mount in the rotary device. At least you could do four sides without intervention, then rotate the dice manually and laser the other two sides. With a long enough (wide) fixture you could laser lots of them at one time, and I would make several fixtures so you could load them up and have several batches ready to go. This won't work with the "hot dog roller" rotary devices, only with the chuck type.

[David Somers]

John,

To expand on Gary's thoughts a bit....rather than spending money on a rotary just for this, why not use the laser to cut a base from MDF that would hold one or more rows of dice lined up with each row lightly clamped together. Burn the one side, then the whole row or rows could be rotated 90 degrees as a unit and the second side burned, then the third and the fourth. The final two sides could be done through the same mechanism, but you will have to handle all the dice once each to re position them with the un-engraved sides exposed. Again, burn the one side, rotate the line of dice as a unit and burn the final side.

Your jig might consist of something to hold the entire row of dice in a laser cut slot in MDF or a similar material. A clamp or even a rubber band of some sort would hold the row of dice firmly as a unit. The file you used to cut the MDF rows on your jig would be your basis for the template to burn the figures into the dice themselves so your design is lined up with your work hold. Be sure to save your original file that created the MDF holder so you can use it later to make more holders if needed, and as the basis for new "pip" burning patterns. It becomes your design/engraving template in other words.

My apologies by the way.....I wrote this entry last night, apparently far far too late in the evening after a long day with a realllllly cold and long bike ride home still to come. I was a bit shocked when I reread it this AM and saw it was pretty incoherent. Although I live in Seattle where marijuana is legal I don't smoke or add it to brownies. But I would have been hard pressed to convince you of that having read this post!! <grin> My apologies. I did clean up the post this morning. Hope it is a bit more coherent.

Joe Hillman's later post about using two jigs to hold the dice so you can manipulate one while burning the other is excellent as well. MDF is cheap.

Dave (working way too many hours) Somers

[Joe Hillmann]

You could build two jigs. When one is being engraved you are putting dice in or turning dice in the other. When the first one is done engraving put the second one in and turn the dice on the first. You are still turning each dice 6 times but turnign them isn't taking up laser time.

[Ryan Mooney]

Interesting discussion. In the gamer market dice are big money (I was talking to an acquaintance who's in the early stages of running a gaming store the other day and he said that currently the majority of their revenue is dice). In order to really get into that market though I think you'd want to do all 7 "sizes" (4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 20 sided) of dice which makes this somewhat more complicated.

[Jonathan Bowen]

I hunted around for a bit and never found one but is there a source for dice with one blank side? So the 6 or the 1 missing. Then you can just etch one side and make a custom logo die.

[Ross Moshinsky]

Make two jigs.

Put dice in jig. Engrave. Then put other jig on top of dice. Flip. Engrave. Manually flip dice. Engrave. Put jig on top of dice. Flip. Engrave. Manually flip dice. Engrave. Put jig in top. Flip. Done. If you add a third jig in, you could do the manual flipping while the engraver is running.

[Bob A Miller]

Try calling Chessex. I recall seeing them selling blanks sided dice at Gencon. Given they wholesale I expect they have access to quite a bit.

[Glen Monaghan]

http://www.chessex.com/Dice/Dice_Home.htm
shows blank dice in different configurations such as standard 6 sided and ranging from 1 sided (sphere) to 100 sided.

[Dan Hintz]

Now I just want to engrave my own dice, just to say "I made these" the next time I play a game with friends.

[Jonathan Bowen]

Well Chessex said what I suspected. They use the single blank sides in house for custom dice and refuse to sell them to little old me.

[Dee Gallo]

John, I have not done it, but it would be pretty easy to make your pips with a fountain filled circle from 100% black to 20% black for instance. That would make them dip down like "real" dice.

BTW- if you go to eBay, there are lots of blank dice there for sale. I always buy my dice from jspassnthru. Cheryl is very helpful and reliable.

[Bill Cunningham]

Now I just want to engrave my own dice, just to say "I made these" the next time I play a game with friends.

They may not believe you Dan ! Didn't someone in your country say "You didn't build(make) that!".. Not wanting to be political, I can't quite remember who it was though!;)

[Dan Hintz]

They may not believe you Dan !

<chuckle> If there's a friend of mine that doesn't know I own a laser, they're not really a friend ;)

[Dave Sheldrake]

I've done a few thousand dice over the last couple of years for the gamers market :) the biggest problem was the consistency of the sizes when stacking them in rows.

If you are looking at doing lots then go for a 60 watt or even a 40 watt Shenhui, 100 watt is too powerful and will cut in too deep at it's minimum strike power level. China is a great source for blanks but often they contain PVC so can be "troublesome" to say the least ;)

cheers

Dave

[John Warren]

Hey thanks for all the helpful posts everyone! Sorry I kind of fell off the planet right after posting this thread. I got sick the next day and have been playing catch-up with work ever since.


I would come up with a fixture that would mount in the rotary device. At least you could do four sides without intervention, then rotate the dice manually and laser the other two sides. With a long enough (wide) fixture you could laser lots of them at one time, and I would make several fixtures so you could load them up and have several batches ready to go. This won't work with the "hot dog roller" rotary devices, only with the chuck type.


That's an interesting thought, I hadn't considered using a rotary attachment for something like this. I haven't honestly looked too deeply into how that works, but most of what I've seen it's engraving on a round item as it rotates. I would think if you were rotating an item with flat faces while engraving that would mess up the focus (maybe among other things)? Is it possible to have the rotary device do a portion of the engraving, stop, rotate the item 90 degrees, and engrave the next portion, etc?



John,

...

My apologies by the way.....I wrote this entry last night, apparently far far too late in the evening after a long day with a realllllly cold and long bike ride home still to come. I was a bit shocked when I reread it this AM and saw it was pretty incoherent. Although I live in Seattle where marijuana is legal I don't smoke or add it to brownies. But I would have been hard pressed to convince you of that having read this post!! <grin> My apologies. I did clean up the post this morning. Hope it is a bit more coherent.

Joe Hillman's later post about using two jigs to hold the dice so you can manipulate one while burning the other is excellent as well. MDF is cheap.

Dave (working way too many hours) Somers

Lol! I read this initially before you cleaned it up and I think I was able to understand most of it ;)


You could build two jigs. When one is being engraved you are putting dice in or turning dice in the other. When the first one is done engraving put the second one in and turn the dice on the first. You are still turning each dice 6 times but turnign them isn't taking up laser time.

I really like this idea considering how much time may be spent turning that many dice it'd be nice to have the next set going while I'm working on it. Assuming I cut the template out of MDF, would you just glue a second sheet to the bottom of the template to keep the dice from falling out when you pick up the template? I guess that might be the way to do it anyway so you don't have to worry about them sitting evenly on the honeycomb?


Interesting discussion. In the gamer market dice are big money (I was talking to an acquaintance who's in the early stages of running a gaming store the other day and he said that currently the majority of their revenue is dice). In order to really get into that market though I think you'd want to do all 7 "sizes" (4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 20 sided) of dice which makes this somewhat more complicated.

That's very interesting... I knew there was a market for it, but I wouldn't have pegged it as something that would be the majority chunk of revenue for a gaming store. I'm considering plans for the other die shapes down the road, but figure getting a handle on the plain old d6 first makes sense.


I hunted around for a bit and never found one but is there a source for dice with one blank side? So the 6 or the 1 missing. Then you can just etch one side and make a custom logo die.

I'm not sure, that's not something I've specifically looked for. I've been looking at Chinese dice manufacturers though and they seem willing to put whatever patterns you want on their dice (in fact a few of them have had trouble understanding that I actually wanted them completely blank). So I'm sure they could produce something for you - but would be a volume order (MOQs seem to range from 1k-50k, but 5-20k seems to be the most common range).



Now I just want to engrave my own dice, just to say "I made these" the next time I play a game with friends.

Lol, I've got so many ideas for things that would be cool to make myself if/when I get my laser set up.


John, I have not done it, but it would be pretty easy to make your pips with a fountain filled circle from 100% black to 20% black for instance. That would make them dip down like "real" dice.

BTW- if you go to eBay, there are lots of blank dice there for sale. I always buy my dice from jspassnthru. Cheryl is very helpful and reliable.

I've been looking at importing larger quantities, but I'll definitely keep Cheryl in mind - a quick Google search makes it look like she may be a good contact to have when I jump down this rabbit hole.



I've done a few thousand dice over the last couple of years for the gamers market :) the biggest problem was the consistency of the sizes when stacking them in rows.

If you are looking at doing lots then go for a 60 watt or even a 40 watt Shenhui, 100 watt is too powerful and will cut in too deep at it's minimum strike power level. China is a great source for blanks but often they contain PVC so can be "troublesome" to say the least ;)

cheers

Dave

Yeah, I know they're not reliably accurate enough in size that you can just stack them next to each other and expect to always have exactly the same outcome (which is why casino dice have a completely different manufacturing process).

I had been beginning to wonder if this project might be better suited for a lower wattage machine. I'm looking at a 45W Shenhui as an option but could be upgraded to 60W very inexpensively. If it comes down to those two options would you recommend going with 45W or 60W? I realize it also partially depends on what other projects I'll be doing, but assuming that optimizing for this project is the priority, which would you choose?

Is the PVC in dice listed as acrylic or do they generally list them as a different material? I've noticed that the dice manufacturers in China mention urea as an available material, but that's not something I'm familiar with so I've been steering clear of that when getting quotes and assuming the acrylic ones were safe to engrave. Do they have something like an MSDS sheet for their materials normally and/or do you just have to ask if it contains PVC?


---

Again, thanks everyone for all the helpful posts! Sorry it took me so long to respond to them.

[Bert Kemp]

All this talk about Dice 282903Then Dan saying he wanted to make a pair just so he could say he did, Well Hey I made these LOL 282902

[Dan Hintz]

That's an interesting thought, I hadn't considered using a rotary attachment for something like this. I haven't honestly looked too deeply into how that works, but most of what I've seen it's engraving on a round item as it rotates. I would think if you were rotating an item with flat faces while engraving that would mess up the focus (maybe among other things)? Is it possible to have the rotary device do a portion of the engraving, stop, rotate the item 90 degrees, and engrave the next portion, etc?

I don't believe Gary was suggesting using the rotary device as a rotary device, merely as a jig holder.