Chainmail made of little carrick mats (technically 3x4 Turks-Heads) instead of rings. Each one links to four others, forming a somewhat stiff mail. I wouldn't recommend it in anything but one of the "strong-and-flexible" materials, but if you want to try it with a "detail" material that's up to you.

Chain mail... but different. The links are "trefoil" knots--ordinary overhand knots, with the ends joined. Because of the configuration of the knots, the "rings" link together at 120-degree angles, forming an interesting hexagonal sort of pattern. This is a small sample, and the knots themselves are fairly small, making this altogether a rather wispy piece of mail, but very interesting.

Check out gibell's Reuleaux solids at http://www.shapeways.com/model/115463/reuleaux_solids_3cm.html Those are surfaces of rotation based on Reuleaux polygons, which are curves of constant width. These are also surfaces of constant width, but *not* surfaces of rotation. So despite looking decidedly non-spherical, they roll smoothly as spheres.

There are two different Meissner solids, subtly different.  Look closely at the edges.  Some are rounded and some are sharp.  One of them has the round edges making a a triangle and the sharp edges meeting at a point; the other has them the other way around.

These are sized for compatibility with gibell's solids, so if you get all five they will all roll smoothly under the same flat surface together.  And like gibell's, they are hollow with internal braces to lend extra support, with holes in the bottom to let the support material out.

Printed great.  Video below! (the two foreground shapes are mine; the red one in the background is one of gibell's from the set linked above)

A small, plain sphericon. It's a wee little thing, maybe the size of a marble, and it rolls in a straight line like one too, but not in a straight line (a sphere or cylinder can roll straight. A cone rolls around in tight circles. A sphericon wobbles, rolling in alternating half-circles as its cone faces take turns, and so follows a more or less straight path by wobbling back and forth)

A set of FIVE dice in this item: d4, d6, d8, d12, d20. Each die is realized by a "skeleton" (See Sylook''s shop at http://www.shapeways.com/shops/the_shop_of_small_wonders for the idea behind it), with a wireframe model of the *dual* of the relevant polyhedron surrounding the skeleton. The numerals are affixed to the wireframe, which is free to move around on the skeleton--but not too far. Hence the name "rattling bones." (The d4 is a little different; the numbers are on the ends of the skeleton)

So far, has been canceled in steel (antique bronze glossy. reason: Loose parts can't be kept loose without breaking) and in Alumide (reason: Thin wall,
(Probably will be impossible to clean in detail material. I don't know about glass, but I think these really have to be done in strong&flexible.)

A d12 that''s a *rhombic* dodecahedron instead of a regular one.

Have to find a good size. This is a solid version.

This one is way too small. The numbers are unreadable.

(Get one of the hollow versions I have; I'm keeping this model around only because of all the comments on it.)

First attempt at a dreidel, ordinary Hebrew letters, etc.

Logo for Lojban, see http://www.lojban.org/ Order in full-color sandstone if you want it in color!

Remember to order in full-color sandstone to keep the colors!

Johannes Kepler thought he had hit upon a secret of the universe, a demonstration of the guiding hand of God (and geometry) in the structure of the heavens. In his _Mysterium Cosmographicum_ (see http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Johannes_Kepler#Mysterium_Cosmographicum), he showed how the (circular) orbits of the planets could be shown to correspond to the five Platonic regular solids, nested inside and outside the spheres containing the orbits. It's an elegant theory, consonant with the idea of perfection in the heavens, and even explains why there were only six planets (because there are only five convex regular solids).

Of course, for all its beauty and elegance, the theory is *wrong*, and indeed there is no relationship between the Platonic solids and the orbits of the planets, and the planets don't even move in circles, and there are more than six of them. Still, here is a model of Kepler's original idea, rendered in thin wires. The spheres of the planets' orbits are suggested by half-spheres of eight spokes, and the solids are rendered in wireframe nesting within them. Because of the thickness of the wires, the solids and the spheres overlap a little—a feature which, I hope, keeps the model together. There are also some support wires, two running across the top of the spheres and one down through their pole.

An initial print has proved... not as bad as might be. The thin "wires" of WSF material are somewhat too flexible for the project, but only on the outermost shapes (the outermost sphere and especially the cube). The inner ones, even the tetrahedron, are fairly sturdy and rigid enough. I've thickened the wires of the cube and also added an "X" of supporting struts on each face of the cube and attached them to the next smaller sphere, and a "Y" of them on each face of the tetrahedron for good measure. I also put two more rings on the outermost sphere for more stability and added a base so that it has something to stand on. Might still be a little wobbly, but everything added makes it more expensive, so I'm hoping to do more with less. Have not yet printed the new version.

Created per a user request for a copy of the badge from the old NeXT machines.

Ever roll a die and just KNOW the answer in advance? This die is a foregone conclusion. It''s based on the unistable polyhedron from http://mathworld.wolfram.com/UnistablePolyhedron.html ; if I did things right it should ONLY be able to land on one face (the opposite edge is helpfully marked with a single split pip)

(General advice: dice look good in detail material)

Print has come back and this die does NOT work as advertised! It seems to have more than one place it can come to rest. Back to the drawing board.

I think the problem lieth with the light weight of the material and the surface ridges that detail material has from the printing process (my sample was printed in black detail). Trying one with much shallower slanted sides, so the weight of the wider bottom is more significant.

A 60-sided die shaped like a deltoidal hexecontahedron, with a big pocket of support material on the inside.

The rarely-seen forty-eight-sided die! Yes, forty-eight adventure-loving faces, waiting to generate random numbers for you.

The edges are raised, and so are the numbers (but not as much as the edges).

Printed out pretty nicely! The digits are small, but readable.

6-sided dice that bear a strange combination of numbers, but still have exactly the same odds for every total as an ordinary pair of d6s. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicherman_dice

They have an empty pocket inside, full of support material, to lower price.

(general advice: dice look good in detail material)

A single die that emulates all the possible rolls of two six-sided dice. All 36 possible rolls are depicted on its 36 faces, using die-pip diagrams. It should be big enough to read, since it''s nice and roomy and hollow.

The pips are maybe a little too deep, but otherwise pretty good.

An actual die based on the sphericon shape. It''s kind of weird because it doesn''t always land with a face upwards; some numbers are indicated landing point-upwards. There are smaller numbers around the relevant vertices to label those. I've worked on making those "smaller numbers" less small, at least on otherwise empty faces; they are now reasonably readable. Also, the numbering now not only has opposite faces adding to 13, but the value of a vertex (for those vertices that can land pointing up) is now equal to the sum of the values of the two numbered faces adjacent to it, or the difference between them if the sum would be greater than 12.

Odd though it may look, I think this die is actually completely fair. All of the faces are identical, the center of gravity is right in the middle, at exactly the same height (potential energy) no matter which face it is sitting on, and the energy to roll from one face to another is just the same for all faces, since it derives from the smooth-rolling sphericon. And in fact six dozen rolls of the die and a chi-square test show no cause at all to reject the hypothesis that this die is fair.

cunso namcu kubli

A strip of material 10cm long, with a group of 5 pips and the number "5" indented into it 10 times, at each depth from .1mm to 1mm. To get a feel for how deep numbers etc should be.

Updated to have outdented numbers (turned sideways because things were a little cramped.)

cunso namcu bliku .i lo sefta cu se tcita zo pa bi''o zo gai

Another "open" d12, with recessed sub-faces like rotated main faces. This one is based on the rhombic dodecahedron instead of the regular dodecahedron. (Too bad 12-sided dice are so infrequently used.)

Another in the "open" series, the numbers are on small triangles inside the larger "cage."

A complete set of the "open" dice: a d4, d6, d8, d20 and two d12s (one normal and one rhombic).

Placed together here, this shows a mistake in my design process: I did not consider the scale of the dice next to each other. Oops.