Introduction

The Original Blaster(s) c. 2022-2023

During the NASA HUNCH project, my group and I developed numerous devices to roll dice in a microgravity environment. All our ideas used magnets to 'capture' the dice. That, in and of itself, was a hurdle. The dice needed to be ferromagnetic—i.e., they must contain iron, nickel, or cobalt. The dice can't be too heavy—i.e., they can't have too much iron, nickel, or cobalt. And they can't be poisonous—sorry, cobalt. Notwithstanding the weight issue, we still looked for metal dice that could be used. While there are metal dice in the marketplace, the metal they were made of was either unsuitable or unknown. As a stopgap solution, I designed a D4 and D6 (four-sided and six-sided dice, respectively) with steel ball bearings placed at the center of mass. 

These dice had issues: They were hard to assemble, had dubious randomness, and while they were attracted to magnets, they needed a strong magnet to stick. As soon as we began using these new dice, we sought a better solution. This solution manifested itself as iron filing filled PLA 3D printer filament. This filament allowed us to 3D-print our dice and solve our dice problem.

With that problem solved, we needed to create a device to roll them. We had initially planned to build a foldable tray with a bed of magnets. We decided that wasn't going to cut the mustard. We endeavored to design a centrifugal spinner, i.e., spin dice and throw them out onto a tray of magnets using centrifugal 'force.' I designed two spinners. The first was too big.  The second was more of the same. Both spinners used a hand crank and threw the dice onto a separate tray; we wanted the spinner and tray to be one device. I was trying to conceptualize a new spinner when I took a look at a flashlight with a built-in generator. This flashlight used a trigger to spin the generator. Bingo! The trigger and device could be held in a single hand while the other hand put the dice in the device. I hopped onto the computer and began making my idea a reality. I manufactured a proof of concept, proving that my idea would work.

With this first blaster, problems were extant. Two of the biggest problems were the gears not meshing or spinning smoothly (note the immense amount of graphite lubricant in the image above) and the tumbler (topmost blue part) not spinning at a suitable rate. While these problems prevented the first blaster from reliably performing, it was, by and large, a success. The trigger mechanism worked beautifully. The centrifugal clutch worked as intended—while initially deemed necessary, the centrifugal clutch is detrimental to the function of the blaster, but more on that in a later section. New blasters were designed using what was learned by designing and testing the first blaster. 

Below is a report that describes each part and what it does in the blaster. This report was written during the NASA HUNCH project. Just so you know, this report contains numerous grammatical errors—I guess this showcases why I will be an engineer, not a writer.

The Microgravity Dice Blasters of 2024

After the NASA HUNCH project had ended, I wanted to produce more blasters. In doing that, I also wanted to improve the blasters. Since the end of the HUNCH project, I have thought about ways to improve the blaster.  I made size, appearance, practicality, and functional improvements. Those improvements are highlighted in the excerpts below.