This is what I’ve got so far. Like the post I linked to, I’m struggling with dice getting stuck on the way down. They seem to hit the ceiling at the second step. After some convincing past the second step they still seem to lose their mojo before making their way all the way out. For my second go I’m going to make it taller (more space between the top steps and the ceiling) and make every other step (or something like that) slanted to help the dice along. I’ll also need to make a wall at the bottom to help guide them out the door.
The issue @kodiakkoehlers had with theirs was that if each step was slanted the dice would just slide down without tumbling. Adding more space between each landing will cause the dice to tumble more. I’m trying to strike a balance between getting the dice down the stairs but also to rotate as they do so.
Yeah, a lip or some bumps on the steps would induce tumble.
But dice are light and it will still be easy to have too many steps slowing them down. I feel like this idea needs to be taller, with fewer steps, bigger drops, and steeper slopes. But that is a hunch, I haven’t done the math.
I made the whole thing taller, so the dice would drop more off of each step, and alternated each step between horizontal and slanted so that it would have a large drop from stop steps and have some convincing gravity from others. I also worked a bit more on the exit strategy (this aspect still needs more work).
I shelved this project for a short while but I wanted to pick it up again. From previous iterations and advice on this thread I decided that having each step be angled would be better than alternating between horizontal and angled.
Now I’m working on the exit ramp and have a new problem - compound angles. I’m making it out of three pieces:
A - short vertical side
B - tall vertical side
C - the actual ramp
A solution that I see is to make the two vertical sides parallel as well; however, I don’t want to do this because I like the look of these pieces coming out from the center of the spiral.
Has anyone ever made compound angles between pieces? I think there may be something in the threads where people make polyhedrons… maybe make an extra piece to take care of the compound angle? I haven’t fully fleshed out that idea yet, still thinking about it.
