Day 1:
Before I begin actually building the structure of my roller, I first want to make sure my circuit works, so I got a switch, battery, and motor and soldered the circuit together. It spun and worked well. Then, I took it back apart, because I need to reroute some of the wires under my structure to hide it.
Learning how to solder was quite fun and I was pretty bad at it at first. However, I started to get the hang of it after a few tries. It’s oddly satisfying to be completely honest.
Day 2:
I took Andy’s leftover single-use plastic cup and washed it. I then cut the bottom to get only the top lid. This lid will come in quite handy as I can take the lid off the ring to insert dice into my project. There is also a small hole on top which people can also use to put dice inside.
I then cut out a wooden circle with the help of Ms. Amanda to build the base of my dice roller. This is where my lid will be attached to and where my motor and components will be hidden. I hot-glued it to a piece of cardboard and routed my wires back through. I had to solder them with the structure which was a bit of a struggle but it worked out all right.
Day 3:
I fully assembled the technical part of my project. The motor and switch were soldered together and hot glued to the base as well. I noticed that the switch could fit right against the base, which ended up working very well.
Here’s a picture of the build with the lid on:
Day 4:
I did some testing using dice, and I noticed a problem with my design. When the dice were spinning, they spun against the wall and were not really getting shuffled. It was just being spun around due to the speed of the motor. To fix this, I decided to add some bumps to the surface to vary how the dice would spin to make it actually roll and randomized. I used a hot glue gun to add small spots where the dice would bump and fling upwards too. This definitely helped as afterward the dice would give me a randomized result, rather than just staying the same and spinning.
Some feedback I got from others:
Andy: It’s alright. You might want to use a dice that doesn’t just have the letter C and a dot. Also, I wonder what would happen if you put in multiple dice?
Bowen: I’m sorry Eddie, but I feel like this is a bit unnecessary as you can literally just do this: *shakes dice in container*
But the idea of adding bumps to make it randomized is very creative.
Austin: Very fancy.. very.. fancy. Maybe the casino can use this in the future.
Andrew: woahh.. very cool. It’s a little bit loud though when it spins. But it’s like super satisfying watching the dice roll around.
Here is a video of my final product: