This is more an experiment than anything else.

I was thinking about printing dice in multiple colours, but I always hate the filament changes because it just creates waste.

I wondered if I could print something that could be folded - that way the colour changes could be minimised to just the first layer or two, and the infill plastic inside the dice could be avoided as well. Also, if all the faces are printed onto the plate, the finish is the same on all sides.

So this is what I came up with - you print the dice as a flat piece with hinges, put a small amount of glue on each of the “tabs”, fold it up, and then put it into the assembly jig to hold it together while the glue dries.

It did what I wanted, so I'm happy with it and probably won't be doing much more with this as my curiosity is satisfied now.

The dice are 2.4cm on each side. I made some efforts to ensure that they are reasonably well-balanced (hence the useless internal tabs), though I haven't done any real testing to see if they are biased in any way.

Because of the tolerances of the hinges and the assembly jig, I would be cautious about scaling these up or down too much.

Printing Instructions:

Use 0.2mm layers - this is important due to the thickness of the hinges. If you try other thicknesses you might get missing hinges, or hinges that are too thick to bend (and will just snap). At the very least, if you use other layer thicknesses you should check on your slicer to make sure the hinges will exist in the final print before you press the “go” button.

Infill doesn't matter too much, and you won't need any supports or brims.

I'd recommend using the FoldingDice.3mf file if you can, and then pick some colours you like. Or colours you don't like - it's up to you really. I won't judge.

If you can't use the 3MF file, you can also “assemble” the FoldingDice.stland FoldingDiceDots.stl together in your slicer of choice.

Use the STL or STEP versions of the AssemblyJig file as suits your slicer.

Assembly Instructions:

As noted above…

1. Print the assembly jig (you only need one, you can re-use it as many times as you like)
2. Print the flattened dice in colours of your choosing (3mf file provided)
3. Apply a small amount of glue to all of the outermost tabs (see ge). I used a cotton bud and some superglue for this. There is no need to glue the inner tabs, but you can do those too if you like.
4. Fold the dice into its ultimate cubic form!
5. Put the dice into the assembly jig with the “1” face upward - you can put it in any way around really, but you'll see that if the 1 face is uppermost it's the best way to have it held.
6. Wait for the glue to dry, then push the dice back out.

The assembly jig tolerance is 0.15mm all the way around, so it's a snug fit but should slide in and out pretty easily.