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ArcticMyst Security by Avery

Tungsten dice

Are you interested?

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Bearded_Galaxy

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pseudolobster said:
Well, if you can get a good price on unpolished tungsten platonic solids, I'd be happy to polish them myself and paint my own pips on... I have all this diamond polishing compound sitting here and nothing to polish with it.

Do you have any pics of the prototypes? As long as they're accurately machined I don't see a problem with them being unpolished and numberless.
Click to expand...

What about the d4 through d20 (not counting d6), including d%? Not that I'm not grateful for such a generous offer, but it might be unrealistic, at least for the numbers. And do you have enough polish for perhaps 100 dice or more? And are you willing to commit to that? How about if I send you the sample and you can polish it and try to pip the two blank sides, then maybe we can see from there.
 
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pseudolobster

pseudolobster

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Ham549 said:
Why do we want dice made of Tungsten again?
Click to expand...

Because it's really heavy, heavier than lead, yet it's incredibly hard, harder than steel.

I dunno, seemed like a good idea at the time. I'd still really like to have something made of tungsten around so people can ask me "Hey, why's this so heavy" and I'll say "THAT'S TUNGSTEN, BABY!"
 
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Bearded_Galaxy

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The Sample die I got from the company was pretty bad, and I just don't know if the rest would be that bad or not, so I'm avoiding the risk and just letting it go, at least for now.
 
bobhaha

bobhaha

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Well I'm interested.. Didn't you send the samples to two different companies??? also what about if you use heat imprints like jayrob's RPL logo mod? would that work to "print" the numbers on the die? Also I would be interested in a smaller version about 1cm*1cm*1cm as well as a "normal" sized one!

Also.. prob a stupid question.. but could you sand blast the tungsten?? my dad has a very fine sand with some type of metal in it (could be tungsten) and he uses that to clean car parts and stuff.. do you think that will work?
 
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Bearded_Galaxy

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I don't know about any imprinting, and I sent plastic dice to two companies to get price quotes/estimates, but only one company could send me a sample die.

What's the purpose of the sandblasting?
 
pseudolobster

pseudolobster

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Can you post a pic of the prototype? What's so bad about it? Does it have deep tooling marks or is it just not polished? Are all the sides at least evenly shaped etc?

My idea for polishing was I was just going to toss it in a rock tumbler with some diamond slurry and let it roll for a day or two.. I'm guessing that should probably polish it pretty good.
 
bobhaha

bobhaha

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It might also round the edges... :(

Here are a few bodgey pics I took with my phone.. the "sand" is very fine and contains an unknow magnetic metal. My dad also has a bag of courser "sand" which is approx the size of a grain of sand...

here is the pic of the finer "sand"

09102009002.jpg


and yess its magnetic

09102009003.jpg


BTW sorry for bodgey pics
 
rocketparrotlet

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Well, if it's magnetic, then it's not as hard as tungsten. Tungsten is also incredibly brittle, it would more likely chip it than sand it clean.

A diamond slurry in a rock tumbler should probably work. (Where do you find diamond slurry?)

I wish I had more tungsten, it's really cool stuff.

-Mark
 
bobhaha

bobhaha

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kk cool just a thought.. its incredably fine stuff so I just naturaly thought it would either work or not work... don't think it would do any damage tho. I too think the rock tumbler would work.. but it will take a while.. any thoughts on the RPL logo mod idea?? recon that would work?
 
pseudolobster

pseudolobster

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rocketparrotlet said:
A diamond slurry in a rock tumbler should probably work. (Where do you find diamond slurry?)
Click to expand...

Well, I've got some powder I got off ebay, though they do sell diamond polishing compounds and diamond slurries, I was just going with what I have on hand... it's less than 100mesh as far as I can tell... I was thinking of adding some kind of light oil to make it a slurry.

I'm no metallurgist and I really have no idea if what I'm thinking of will work or not, but I suspect it will.

I work in an industrial part of town, and there's a lot of machine shops nearby, I'm pretty sure I can ask them what would be appropriate for polishing tungsten if I ever needed to do a whole lot at once, they carry all sorts of "jewlers rue" and other such polishing compounds, so I'm pretty sure one way or another I could get some unpolished tungsten polished if need be. I was just thinking of polishing my own dice if this GB went through, but if I were thinking of doing a large batch, it shouldn't be hard.

If it came down to it, there's lots of online retailers selling polishing compounds that would probably suit our purposes, such as: NEW Diamond Slurry - SHO POLISH (4kg) - Showa Denko - eBay (item 250510072195 end time Nov-05-09 19:22:19 PST)
 
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Bearded_Galaxy

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Sounds good to me. I'll post some pictures soon. pseudolobster, PM me your address (or P.O. box, whatever), and I'll mail you the die. It shouldn't be too expensive. Also, since it's got 30% copper, it's not going to be too easy to chip, where pure tungsten might.
 
bobhaha

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Wouldn't that also round off the edges? After two days I doubt it would turn in to a sphere, but I would have to believe the sharp edges would be gone.
Click to expand...

Thats what I thought!

Sounds good to me. I'll post some pictures soon. pseudolobster, PM me your address (or P.O. box, whatever), and I'll mail you the die. It shouldn't be too expensive. Also, since it's got 30% copper, it's not going to be too easy to chip, where pure tungsten might.
Click to expand...

If it works out put me down for 2 sets!!
 
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Bearded_Galaxy

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*UPDATE* (sort of)

So, I still haven't been able to mail the die, I've been super busy this week, midterms are next week for me. Hopefully I'll have it in the mail by Friday, though.
 
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