September 2015: Good news everybody! My shop on Shapeways is finally live! I'm still getting all the photos and videos in place, and working on making group products for easier shopping, but until then I've lowered all the prices to almost as low as Shapeways will allow! So check them out, buy some dice, let me know what you think: www.shapeways.com/shops/vectordice
July 2015. I made a tens die for percentiles , then didn't like it and remade it with thinner walls. I'm pretty happy with how they look now, and I've made a corporation, so the last step is getting a business account! Looking forward to being able to share these guys with you. More good news is that Shapeways dropped the cost of steel 3d printing last year, so these will be slightly less expensive when they actually go on sale.
December 2014. I've had the final models in my hands for a while, but I haven't set up a business account with Shapeways yet! Sorry these guys won't be available in time for the holidays, but I'm trying to work out sending some at-cost dice to friends and family, so it hopefully won't be long now. Here's the latest dice revisions.
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Update for August 2014. Got in pre-final versions of all my dice in steel! I want to make the discs a bit smaller on the d6 and d12, and the d4 still has some design kinks to work out... but they're pretty much all set to go. Hoping it will just be another week or so (PAX will eat up my free time this weekend) before I declare things Finished.
Speaking of finishes, I plan on having two for sale; the plain steel and the dark brown. Since a set of 7 contains 2d10, I figure people should be able to choose 6 gray 1 brown, or the inverse. Everyone wins. The bottom images in this gallery show the 2 finishes.
Note: Shapeways can also print the dice in platinum. Turns out a d20 in plat is only like $3500. Don't worry, steel is much cheaper.... still might be $150 for a set, despite my best efforts to minimize costs. I'll update that when it's all finalized. Until then, enjoy the images!
As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the dice! Please email me at vectordice@gmail.com. Thanks!
Speaking of finishes, I plan on having two for sale; the plain steel and the dark brown. Since a set of 7 contains 2d10, I figure people should be able to choose 6 gray 1 brown, or the inverse. Everyone wins. The bottom images in this gallery show the 2 finishes.
Note: Shapeways can also print the dice in platinum. Turns out a d20 in plat is only like $3500. Don't worry, steel is much cheaper.... still might be $150 for a set, despite my best efforts to minimize costs. I'll update that when it's all finalized. Until then, enjoy the images!
As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the dice! Please email me at vectordice@gmail.com. Thanks!
Great news, everybody! I got the latest version of my dice in, now in stainless steel with all sorts of cool finishes! They're significantly cheaper, but still more than I'd like them to be! Also, the d4 is super-hard to read, as you can probably tell from the pictures. As one final gripe, some design choices I made (extruding the numbers instead of subtracting them) has obscured some of the pipe-like vectory nature of the dice.
So they're not quuiiiite ready for sale yet! I'm going to try to do one last design run on them and order one more set of samples before I put them up for sale. I'd love to hear your thoughts on which finish to use and the design in general! I'm on Twitter @vectordice, and also vectordice@gmail.com. Right now the d20 is pretty clear, so that finish will probably be the main one, but since you need a second color for your second ten-sider, decisions must be made!
So they're not quuiiiite ready for sale yet! I'm going to try to do one last design run on them and order one more set of samples before I put them up for sale. I'd love to hear your thoughts on which finish to use and the design in general! I'm on Twitter @vectordice, and also vectordice@gmail.com. Right now the d20 is pretty clear, so that finish will probably be the main one, but since you need a second color for your second ten-sider, decisions must be made!
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Thanks for stopping by and showing interest in vectordice. After months of planning, design, and reworking, vectordice set version 1 is just about ready to go! They're printed in brass from Shapeways. Well, one of the 10-siders is bronze but you really can't tell the difference... So I have a bit of reworking to do before I make them available, but they look and feel really nice so far. I've balanced their centers of mass and done what I could about the moments of inertia (those got real complicated real quick, though).
The only downside at this point is that a full set of 7 is prohibitively expensive! Depending on the model the dice cost $40-50 each, so they're still for a very niche market. Version 2 will be redesigned in steel, but the minimum thickness for DMLS steel on Shapeways is 3mm, versus 0.8mm for brass. So it will take some work to get looking just right! Keep checking here for updates; hopefully it won't be another 4 months of silence. I'll link my models on Shapeways as soon as they're available for purchase.
If you have any thoughts on the dice design or material, or just want to talk 3d-printing or engineering in general, don't hesitate to shoot an email over to vectordice@gmail.com. If typing in URLs all the time isn't your thing, you can also follow us on Twitter at @vectordice for announcements and news. Until then, enjoy some photos of the beta dice!
The only downside at this point is that a full set of 7 is prohibitively expensive! Depending on the model the dice cost $40-50 each, so they're still for a very niche market. Version 2 will be redesigned in steel, but the minimum thickness for DMLS steel on Shapeways is 3mm, versus 0.8mm for brass. So it will take some work to get looking just right! Keep checking here for updates; hopefully it won't be another 4 months of silence. I'll link my models on Shapeways as soon as they're available for purchase.
If you have any thoughts on the dice design or material, or just want to talk 3d-printing or engineering in general, don't hesitate to shoot an email over to vectordice@gmail.com. If typing in URLs all the time isn't your thing, you can also follow us on Twitter at @vectordice for announcements and news. Until then, enjoy some photos of the beta dice!
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Beta versions of the dice:
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