hyperboloid dice tower

youmagine

A hyperbolic lattice structure forms the basis for this dice tower design, combining elements reminiscent of Vladimir Shukhov's towers with those of a power plant cooling tower. I initially printed David South's "bone" dice tower (thing 621548), which works well and looks good, but I was disappointed to find that its columns were curved rather than straight lines. To address this issue, numerous straight beams or wires are used to create the lattice structure of the dice tower. The design also includes a standalone cooling tower shell that serves more as a sculpture with limited practical use. Printing The printing process is surprisingly smooth and stable, resulting in a lightweight full-size dice tower that weighs only 15 grams. This is significantly lighter than other similar designs, such as the "bone" dice tower (66 grams) and the "angular dice tower" (106 grams), without trays. Standard settings are recommended for printing. I used PLA, 200 micrometer layers, and normal speeds. It's essential to print it with the feet up in the air, just like the images shown here. Those printed in PETG also work well. The design requires reasonably good bed adhesion due to its small contact area. For the more delicate version, using blue tape can help achieve better adhesion, and you may want to remove the tower and tape together before peeling off the tape from the tower. Avoid using a raft when printing this design. Trying to remove it might damage the tower instead. A brim might work, though. Installing falsework (supports) would be unnecessary and wasteful. Post-printing Depending on your slicer settings and retraction performance, you may encounter numerous "hairs" connecting the wires after printing. While experimenting with retract settings and flow rates can help eliminate these hairs, I simply accept them as part of the finished structure. They likely add a bit of strength to the tower as well. Designing this hyperbolic lattice shell is relatively straightforward in OpenSCAD. You create a thin cuboid, move it away from the center, tilt it, rotate it, and make copies of it: for (o = [0:s:360-s]) rotate(o) translate([r_t, 0, 0]) rotate([a_1, 0, -a_2]) translate([0,0, l/2]) cube([w, w, l], center=true); By reversing the angles, you can create your shell. I didn't calculate the ring radii or adjust them by hand; instead, I picked a wire length and set the last ring at its height. Design files and history are available on GitHub in my 3D printing repository directory.