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A friend and I are throwing around ideas, as we are both into manufacturing and machining as hobbies. I believe there is a market for precision machined dice-- from d6 to d20.

Most other dice, including Gamescience "precision" dice, are molded. Gamescience dice are supposed to be the best, but they are soft plastic that has shrinkage inside the mold, and they come with sprue marks that the customer has to remove themselves. This sprue mark makes the dice unreliable and not true.

Well feth that.

Imagine a die that is made from hard, marine grade plastic that will not dent or chip (my Gamescience dice had dented edges after one night of D&D on a wooden table). Now imagine that this same die's etched numbers have removed the same amount of material on each side, making an even weight on all sides and a perfect center of gravity.

What are your thoughts on this? How much would you pay for a dice cube of d6 for 40k or a set of 7 polyhedral dice for D&D?

Depending on quality, they'd have to be half the cost of casino dice to even consider it.

how pretty are they? do they come in custom colours/designs?
I'd love a set of Rainbow Dash dice

They would be basic colors--- black, white, grey. Those are what colors this marine grade plastic is available in (but I will try to source other manufacturers). Super glue nor paint will stick to this plastic, and it is UV resistant so they will not change color with age.

Since paint will not stick, having colored numbers may not happen. We will have to do some R&D on this once we have some made. I think colored wax pressed in to the etched numbers would work.

I am more interested in having precision dice rather than colorful ones. Chessex already makes those

I would love decently balanced small D6 dice.

Right now I have 6 different blocks of the small D6 from Chessex.

Out of those, perhaps 2 blocks are "reliable". Meaning that the rolls average out as expected. 3 of the blocks roll low - quite a bit more 1s and 2s than anything else; and 1 block averages quite high - quite a bit more 5s and 6s than anything else.

To be clear, once I had the feeling the bad blocks were off, I spent the time (and it was a long time) to test roll each die in the block 100 times, recorded the result and averaged against the other dice in the block. My gut for each was correct. Granted, not all of the dice in the block exhibited the behavior, but enough of them did to make the entire block useless. And, yes, I know 100 times per die probably isn't enough for a rock solid analysis but when after 100 rolls, 50 are 1s then you have enough info to know that the die is bad.


I don't want an unfair advantage by knowing a particular block averages out much higher or much lower than standard deviation. What I do want is a set of fair dice. I'm playing a dice game and half the fun is in not knowing the action you are about to take will work or not until the dice stop rolling.

So, if you are going down this path I have a few recommendations:

1. Make sure the dice are balanced. This is absolutely critical. Without balance nothing else matters. Make sure you spend the time to test them. Once you have that part down, continue testing each batch.

2. If you are going to have differences in color selection, make sure they are clearly readable across the table with a high contrast between the pips and die color. One of my good blocks is purple pearl with gold pips. I often misread them myself and they slow the game down as my opponent sometimes has to look at them from a different angle due to glare. I hate using them, but if my other set is being used by one of my kids then it's the only one left.

White or off white (bone?) with dark pips / numbers is perhaps the first thing you should do. Years of dice rolling have me preferring pips.

A 36-block of chessex runs between $10 and $15, which means I've wasted around $50 or so on bad blocks. That said, I'd throw my current dice away and happily pay $20 or $25 for a block if I knew they were quality balanced dice that were easy to read.

clively--- thanks for your input!! Very helpful.

The marine board we plan to use has virtually no variance--- so you will not get the "lop sided" dice like what you were talking about from other manufacturers. This is a risk with any molded material-- it can have hidden bubbles or shrinkage on the parts, causing uneven weight and an off center of gravity.

We may even include a certificate with our dice that shows they have been rolled X number of times and are truly random. I think that would be a great selling point!



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kronk wrote:
Depending on quality, they'd have to be half the cost of casino dice to even consider it.

What's the going price on those? And I'm more interested in polyhedral dice myself, which are not used in casinos, but the D6 market is the largest so it's something we must cater to.

And here it comes again, this year's discussion about casino/precision dice and the endless studies people have done on their own dice.

Unless you roll those dice a ridiculous amount of times, no test will be precise or accurate. And rolling them under what conditions?Hard surface, felt, padded, with a bumper, what? Spun high in the air or just tossed? Casino dice are meant to be rolled on a padded, felt surface with a bumper, they don't work so well on a gaming table.

Precision dice have a place in this world: casinos. For gaming, eh, not really such a huge priority.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
And here it comes again, this year's discussion about casino/precision dice and the endless studies people have done on their own dice.

Unless you roll those dice a ridiculous amount of times, no test will be precise or accurate. And rolling them under what conditions?Hard surface, felt, padded, with a bumper, what? Spun high in the air or just tossed? Casino dice are meant to be rolled on a padded, felt surface with a bumper, they don't work so well on a gaming table.

Precision dice have a place in this world: casinos. For gaming, eh, not really such a huge priority.

Thanks for your opinion! Have a nice day.

I suspect peoples' perception of weighted dice is grossly in excess of how weighted dice actually are.

 BryllCream wrote:
I suspect peoples' perception of weighted dice is grossly in excess of how weighted dice actually are.

"Weighted" dice usually means trick/cheat dice, and that is not what this is about at all.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/435266.page

and

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/346793.page

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/435266.page

and

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/346793.page

Please refrain from posting in this thread unless you have something constructive to add. Thanks and have a nice day!

There is a market, but you might be a little late.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/124127689/precision-machined-dice

I was trying to add something. Its called previous discussions about how many people are getting casino dice or complaining about the "inaccuracy" of mass-produced dice. Several threads have been dedicated to the mathhammering of dice. Even a statistician can tell you the proverbial coin flip is not precisely a 50/50 chance due to imblance in casting and stamping. But for gaming, precision dice are more of a novelty than a necessity.

And my question still stands: how would your testing be done?

 lord_blackfang wrote:
There is a market, but you might be a little late.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/124127689/precision-machined-dice

I saw these--- they sure do look fancy! But I am not too keen on the full metal dice with sharp corners.

 nectarprime wrote:

What are your thoughts on this? How much would you pay for a dice cube of d6 for 40k or a set of 7 polyhedral dice for D&D?

A buck a die if they look really nice and spiffy?

Honestly, this sounds like an arseload of work for no real tangible benefit. The agonies of unbalanced dice is not a burning and persistent problem in either table top gaming, or PNP rpgs, and while I'm sure a lot of people would find such a thing 'neat,' there is no driving demand for it beyond novelty and anal retentiveness.

Would you machine on numbers, or dots? Would they be sharp edged or rounded?

How would you define whether a dice is fair? Even if the die is fair, it seems like it'd be hard to differentiate from an unfair die, since they would collapse on to a normal distribution which still has a reasonable room for error. Otherwise you could check the balance of the die, but again how do you define what is fair and what is unfair? Even if you balance the mass on the center and then balance the moment of inertia, that doesn't mean the die is fair, if one edge is more rounded toward the ends in one axis which is compensated for on the opposite edge toward the center of the edge, that will still be "balanced" but it wouldn't roll true either.

I'm not a statistician, but it seems to me it would be very hard to define a fair die from an unfair die. But then on top of that, even if you have unfair dice, if they're randomly unfair and you have a large pool of dice, what does it matter if they're randomly unfair?

Personally I don't think there would be a huge market for it, but then maybe the nerd crowd would be more attracted to it.

I personally wouldn't have much interest as I'm happy with the way my current dice roll and if there's random manufacturing errors in them, those random manufacturing errors will tend to cancel out if you have a large pool of dice you use and both players use the same pool.

You may not be keen on full metal dice with sharp corners, but that person apparently has found a market that is, and a person that had at least put down some of the science on the what and why of material and design selected.

At a bare minimum I would call that your benchmark. And lets face it, yer talking about a material that will be uglier and more expensive than what the big boys put out and not have the "cool" factor associated with slinging metal.

Personally, if I am shelling out for precision dice its only going to be a for a few...I have to think that a cube would be cost prohibative. And if I have two choices...metal or single color meh plastic, I will shell out for metal every time.

Metal would also be the only verifiably consistant material throughout the piece. Even a machine piece of plastic/resin/whatever is going to have inconsistencies in the material itself.

Is there a market... Probably yes (but more from the desire to have more dice than any real problems with how dice roll)

The KS mentioned above did well, but I bet many (if not most) of the dice will end up as decoration rather than being used a lot (as sharp edges and tables/scenery do not mix)

I would buy them, I've also bought casino dice as well so ymmv on using me as a guidepost.

Shotgun wrote:
Personally, if I am shelling out for precision dice its only going to be a for a few...I have to think that a cube would be cost prohibative. And if I have two choices...metal or single color meh plastic, I will shell out for metal every time.

I wouldn't, not for wargaming at least. For one, sharp edged dice don't roll nicely on many gaming tables, for two, sharped edged dice rolling across my carefully assembled and painted polystyrene terrain and toward my carefully painted and easily chipped miniatures doesn't sound overly appealing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Metal would also be the only verifiably consistant material throughout the piece. Even a machine piece of plastic/resin/whatever is going to have inconsistencies in the material itself.

I would think plastic would be verifiable, just weigh it. I wouldn't think density would vary greatly throughout a sample, so as long as they all weigh the same they should be reasonably consistent.

Though I think if you're getting that picky about it, edge quality would also be a factor in consistency which isn't terribly easy to measure regardless of the material.

Would I like some certified random dice? Absolutely. At the expense of funky colours and such? Not so much...

 Eggs wrote:
Would I like some certified random dice? Absolutely. At the expense of funky colours and such? Not so much...

This seems to be one issue many have with this idea. I'll see what other colors I can source.

Keep the input coming guys!

You will not make your fortune with them but some people would buy sets if the price was right.

It might be good to produce RPG dice (D4, D10 etc) as well, though I expect they are a lot more expensive than cubes.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
You will not make your fortune with them but some people would buy sets if the price was right.

It might be good to produce RPG dice (D4, D10 etc) as well, though I expect they are a lot more expensive than cubes.

Yeah, I'm more interested in catering to the RPG market than the wargaming market. D6 will be the first because it will be the most simple to make.

I suggest you look around at the competition. Gamescience sell their dice for $27 for a set of 12 dice. That gives you some idea of pricing.

http://www.gamescience.com/12piecedicesets

If you can rival that pricing and perceived quality you should be able to sell some.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I suggest you look around at the competition. Gamescience sell their dice for $27 for a set of 12 dice. That gives you some idea of pricing.

http://www.gamescience.com/12piecedicesets

If you can rival that pricing and perceived quality you should be able to sell some.

I know all about Gamescience and am not too find of them, nor do I agree with them being that much better than normal dice. They have small sprue parts left on after manufacturing, and the set I received showed obvious shrinkage.

I agree with your comments as I have several sets. The sprue parts need to be carefully sanded off.

The claim of Gamescience is that other makes of RPG dice make biased dice by tumbling them to round down the sides and edges which results in uneven thickness. That is true, according to physics papers I have read.

I don't know how much bias is left in Gamescience dice. The point is that they charge a certain price and people buy their dice, and that is your competition (along with casino dice.)

The only way to get better precision is to cut the dice from blocks of perspex or metal, etc, which is more expensive. That is how casino dice are made.

It is probably more expensive to cut dice for D4, D8 and so on than plain D6.

I remain unconvinced you will be able to manufacture a plastic die that is both perfectly random and not easily ruined.

Casino dice, with their sharp edges, become damaged and therefore biased after only a few uses on a non-squishy surface or when rolled together. What process and materials are you going to use that eliminates that possibility?