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Hello, I've recently come across Lego Digital Designer and must say I've become somewhat obsessed with it . I was originally perusing the BoardGameGeek forums looking for plans for a "Dice Tower" when I came across a thread discussing dice towers made out of Lego. A guy called Aaron Balogh posted a link to a LDD file he had created and well, I've been obsessed ever since... While I've spent a great deal of time in the last few days working on this design I've never really played with Lego before so I don't really know what's practical when it comes to building . Firstly, here is a link to the LDD file: Auto Dice Tower And here are a few photos: The way it's meant to work is you place dice in the tray then press the lever down. This raises the tray and pours the dice into the tower where they roll through and come out the bottom and roll back into the tray. There is a trapdoor in the tower that prevents the dice from falling through before the tray has reached the bottom and is ready to catch the dice. Here are some more images showing how the mechanisms work: This image shows the tower with the tray in the down position. Note I have coloured the bricks yellow to make it easier to see what's going on. In this position the handle is more or less straight. You can see however there is a slight kink in the handle about 2 thirds the way up. This is to facilitate opening of the hatch inside. You can see that if you were to push down on the handle the whole arm would pivot about the lower of those two blue coloured connector pegs and the tray would be elevated, however if you were to pull the handle forwards the handle would pivot about the higher of the two connector pegs and this action is what is used to open the hatch inside the tower: Note how the kink in the handle is more pronounced. While the handle is straight the hatch inside the tower is kept closed: But when the handle is pulled forwards the hatch is pulled open: Now to the tray... See how there are two parallel arms on the side. This is to keep the tray level as it is raised. That small red block at the end of the arms is resting on a connecting bush which is what keeps the tray from tilding forwards and spilling the dice. However, when the tray reaches the top it is meant to hit the ramp and tip the dice into the shoot. Note how the red block is allowed to swing forwards facilitating the tilt of the tray. When the handle is raised it can be seen that the trapdoor still remains closed: The reason this works is because although the trapdoor is hinged at the back the lever is connected to a member that is exactly inline with the connector pegs the whole arm is rotating around: Remember the blue coloured connector pegs mentioned at the beginning of the post. Well the red axle in the above image is directly inline with the lower of those blue pegs. This means that while the arm is rotating about the lower of those two pegs everything connected to the arm stays a constant distance from that red axle. It all just rotates around that point. It's not till you push on the handle and the top part of the handle starts rotating about the top blue peg that the end of the lever gets pulled away and pulls on the trapdoor. When the lever is pulled away from the beam that linkage pulls on the beam and the trap door should then pivot on it's rear hinge. Here is a closeup of the mechanism with the tray raised and the handle as low as it can go: Here is a closeup of the mechanism with the handle in the up position but with the trapdoor still closed: Even though the handle has moved from all the way down to all the way up the mechanism inside the tower has just rotated about that rear axle. And this is what it looks like with the handle pushed forwards and the trapdoor open: As you can see, when the handle pivots about the top peg the bottom gets pulled away and this opens the trapdoor. Anyway, although I've put a lot of thought and effort into this design I really don't know if it is going to work or not. In particular I'm concerned about the trap door mechanism and the tray tilting mechanisms. I'm kind of hoping that someone with more experience may be able to tell me it they think it will work and possibly if someone has enough spare Lego bits about to try assembling a few things and see it it works as hoped. I'd really like to order all the parts and put it together myself but all those parts are surprisingly expensive (well surprising to me at least) and I'm a bit apprehensive about spending several hundred dollars on a build unless I'm pretty confident it will work. All the best, And thanks for your help, Slarti.
