This week I iterated on several CAD versions and made quick laser-cut prototypes to check size and fit. I created CAD for the base board, hex tiles, dice plate and walls, and tokens, and then used the laser cutter to cut and engrave those parts. For the dice plate, I made versions with different wall heights and different wall designs. With the team, I measured spacing between LEDs and cities/settlements and accounted for kerf and a bit of wiggle room so parts place easily – the board cutouts are slightly larger than the pieces. The prototypes confirmed fit and engraving depth and helped me find the best power, speed, resolution, and number of cycles settings for the Epilog machine. The new board has LED-only holes to hide wiring and a shallow divot so tiles don’t move. The dice plate has a locking rim and a smaller hex cutout so the camera can see through the clear plate from underneath. I ran into issues separating engraving and vector layers because the part was 3D but the DXF export is 2D. I fixed this by redrawing some shapes in CorelDRAW and adding extra sketch outlines in SolidWorks before exporting. Additionally, each full board run takes about three hours, and TechSpark hours sometimes pushed cuts to the next day.
Next week I plan to finish the CAD and cut the middle board that holds the buttons so soldering is stable and aligned with the LEDs. We’re a bit behind because making the cutouts exact took time and we had a setback with the buttons, but we’ve ordered new parts. Now that we know the build, we can move faster and make a second board in parallel. After the middle board CAD and cutting are done, I’ll help with the switch matrix build.
The acrylic in the middle is clear, but above has a blue plastic cover on it.
