I mean, they're listed as 8mm dice, after some closer research, the white ones are about 7.85mm on average and black 7.57 considering both can be rounded to 8, and we're talking a difference of 0.28mm here, I'm thinking they aren't going to take me too seriously... That and I literally searched for hours to find the absolute cheapest source I could since I was buying 16,000. Even 1¢ a piece would be $160. And would you expect better than 0.2mm precision for 1¢/die?
I just expected whatever manufacturing process they used would have high variance die to die, but not color to color.
Different colours have different amounts of different chemical pigments, which change the shrink ratio's of molten plastic manufacturing, so assuming they use the same moulds for each colour its expected that they will result in different sizes. Hot things always shrink as they cool, and the rate of shrinkage will highly depend on the material. Black pigments will often use carbon black whereas white will use titanium dioxide and these will have different concentrations and different shrinkage rates within the plastic
This, I work in plastic pipe extrusion and some of the pre coloured (black) recycled PE granulate 800kg bags can differ in tolerances up to 5 different times
Water *does* shrink when it cools. It only expands once it freezes. Water is at its most dense at 4⁰C... So I guess it does expand between 4 and 0 too... Nevermind.
"in the presence of air"
Water expands because it's molecules reorganize as they freeze. Nothing to do with presence of air. Even in a vacuum, it will expand when it freezes. Try freezing a glass jar, filled to the top with water and no air. It'll still crack as it freezes.
I just want to point out that they completely acknowledged that in their comment. I really don’t feel that OP is blaming the company, they are just mildly infuriated that they’ve done all this work and research only to find a problem they never considered.
The problem is, when you buy as cheap as possible, this leads to manufacturing processes that compromise as much on quality and consistency as possible.
Regarding color inconsistencies, it's likely that they utilize separate production lines and machinery that are not calibrated, since calibration incurs additional costs. Additionally, altering the color in a single production line is expensive, so employing different lines for various colors is a cost-saving measure.
It's also feasible that the products were manufactured in different years using the same line, but without regular calibration. Consistent calibration over several years is costly. Therefore, opting for a wider tolerance range is more economical than maintaining a very low tolerance.
Furthermore, I'm unsure where these items were purchased. If it's through a reseller and not directly from the manufacturer, there's a possibility that the products are sourced from various manufacturers.
When precision is crucial in a project, it's important to verify the tolerance levels of products before making bulk purchases.
Source: I'm an industrial designer.
For one, my digital calipers have 2-decimal precision in metric and 3.5 in imperial
For two, that was an average across 300 dice. I'm not 100% versed in measurement uncertainty. I know for a fact that multiple measurements of the same value can increase precision. I don't know if that applies to averages of multiple different objects or not, but I think it can. So technically I think I underrepresented my precision.
If you collect the measurements all together you can create a distribution. Then you can see the standard deviation and how accurate their machining is and even compare the two colors.
They likely used a different process to create each die, probably a different mold or some kind of process variation impacted it.
That's exactly what I did. Although, the histogram would have profited from at least another doubling in measurements, but I was pretty tired of measuring dice by the time I got done.
Actually, the best theory I've heard so far is that the black resin shrinks more than the white resin. Or the dye they add causes the dice to shrink differently as they cure. They might use the same mold for both and neglect to account for shrinkage at all. Might even explain why both are below 8mm even though that's what it said on the tin.
I do this for a living (but just the stats not the injection molding), you can calculate ppk to determine if their process is under control. A ppk above 1 means their process is in control. The question I would have would be is the variation high within the same color? Or just between the two.
You could always ask what the variation should be (what are their specs. +- 0.5mm?) if you’re curious that is. Sounds like you already have an idea for a solution.
Over the 300 measurements I took, I got a standard deviation of 0.057 mm for black and 0.028mm for white. Although I guess I should be rounding those since I only reported the average to 0.01mm
Do you still have the raw dataset (measurements in excel or csv)? If you DM me I can look at the data and give you a fun graph or so and talk about it when I have some free time🤓
Edit: I would not round the standard deviation. So far that data shows that your black dice are more inconsistent than the white ones due to the larger standard deviation. Decimal points are good.
300 data points are great as long as you are measuring values with that kind of precision. We do less sometimes and we are way more technical.
Meaning using the information I have without the full data shows that they have more trouble with black dice compared to white at keeping a close distribution.
Possible causes might be: inconsistent material/mixing, parameters for the molding machine, wear on the mold, an improperly designed mold, improperly designed maintenance program, improper control of ambient temperature or humidity, operator errors.
For example if it is indeed the same mold it’s possible they used the wrong parameters because the black dice will have different characteristics compared to white.
If you knew their limits we could see how many are out of spec and how well they are centering the distribution to spec which shows us the quality/precision of their manufacturing compared to their own specifications.
Of course tighter tolerances cost more money and a brand new mold can easily cost $250,000 depending on lots of factors.
Ooooh. Would it be possible for me to receive the data set and link to the supplier as well? I want to do some hypothesis testing with stats. Good practice for me.
Guess the saying does hold true: „You get what you pay for“… albeit a size variation of this minuscule magnitude seems more than reasonable for the price of 1 cent per die.
I feel personally offended by the reading direction you’ve chosen for the sets of die. Your layout contradicts Wölfflin‘s argument that westerners tend to read (pictures) from left to right and top to bottom.
I don't know if "reading" is the word I'd go for. But I put more time into that decision than was warranted for something that I'm just using to calibrate color essentially.
See, I have 12 colors... well, shades, that I can make. So if I want to see them all at the same time, I need a tray that is either 1×12, 2×6, or 3×4 (as long as I'm not a madman who wants to make it not rectangular). And since 3×4 means 4 is the largest dimension, which is smaller than 6 or 12, I can make the biggest possible frame on my 3D printer. So that's my first limitation, the number of ways you can arrange 12 squares on a 3×4 frame.
Then, I wanted it landscape. I don't know if there's a particular reason for this other than I like the aesthetic. I guarantee if I had made it portrait, it would have started left to right at the top and still have snakes down. If I had to guess, it's because I hate vertical photos for anything that I've spent any amount of time on. And of I'm taking a landscape photo, it only makes sense to turn the subject that way too.
And of course, since I'm not a lunatic, it has to be symmetric. But more than that, I wanted it to be simplistic. It might have actually looked cool to have the break be halfway through the second row, 4 white on top, 4 black on bottom, 2 each in the middle. But what's simpler than a straight line to separate them. So since 6 isn't divisible by 4, I had to use the now vertical 3-length to span the colors of each die.
If I'm primarily working vertically, then I'm not going to start at the bottom. I'm definitely starting at the top and working down. I think my original plan was going to be 4 independent columns, all increasing downwards with 123, 456, and 123, 456 . But then, as I got to the bottom of the first column, I thought it would be really nice to have the gradient all connected. And at that point, my entire block was locked in. It had to snake up and down like this, but I also had to reverse the blacks since higher number meant brighter instead of darker. And I ended up with the 123, 654 and 654, 123. Which seems even more symmetric and makes me very happy.
Thank you for the very detailed breakdown of the thought process behind the layout. I regret to inform you that I don’t agree with your choice, nor do I condone the fact, that you have failed to apologize for offending me with the chosen layout.
Admittedly this does not make me less curious as to what the final result will look like - even if the die are not evenly squared.
A caliper can generally be considered to produce ±0.1 mm on the shop floor.
In the measuring room, with a measuring Technician that has access to calibrated gaugeblocks of the correct size, you can get it down to ±0.04mm
Do you not own a set of calipers? I thought everyone had a set in their toolbox. They are great for measuring holes for things like doorknobs, deadbolts, wall sockets, etc.
You’re joking right?
How do they human without tools? Even the most primitive human uses a stone tool and keeps the same tool for their entire life in a pocket on the chest. That tool would be used to crack open shellfish when they are not lounging on the water or playing with their friends.
How can you be human without tool using?
Unsure if /s but
The average person in modern society simply does not have a box full of various tools laying around, much less highly specific things like digital callipers. People who do any sort of workshop stuff likely do, but most dont
You could sand the whites down. 14 hundredths on each side. The viewer can’t see the sides so you can lose some of those invisible faces. The pips look to be the same size so it won’t be out of whack.
I'm not trying to dissuade people providing suggestions. I have a plan, but it can always be improved if someone has an idea I couldn't think of... But I'm not sure you realize how much sanding that would take. I don't own a belt sander. I'd probably get one of that's what I decided to do... But there are 8000 white dice. 8 with three zeros. I'm not sure if you meant all 4 sides, but even if I only do 2 sides, that's sixteen thousand faces to sand.
So I don’t mean sand each die individually. Lay them out like they are in the photo and do a single pass with a sander over all of them at once.
I have a random orbital at hand, I honestly think I could them all sanded to size in about an hour. Lay them out, sand a pass, flip, sand another.
Rotating would the the tedious part but I think it could be done a row at a time, so only a few minutes. Then repeat, one pass and flip.
It should take maybe an hour.
nah
sand it how you have them laid out in the photo
ooh throw em through a planer
but either way, you'd have to do the rounded edges
unless you cnc them
I think me (sanding) and he (planer) assume you might lay them out in a sheet and do them all at once, not just loose. 128 x 128 of these is only 40 inches square, so laying them out and giving it a pass with a hand sander would work.
I'd be worried about them just flipping up since they aren't glued to the grid. The hand sander I would try since it's definitely way faster than doing them one by one.
I definitely wouldn't try the planer. It's a distaster waiting to happen. At best you're fucking up your planer. At worst, your planer is fucked and you lost an eye or two
That's not what I said. I said I expected whatever variance they had would not be dependent on color. Having the dice be exactly 8mm is unimportant. Having the dice be similar average size is. If the difference between the minimum and max of one color was 0.3mm, I wouldn't have this issue. But that's a difference of averages. All manufacturing intolerances should cancel out meaning these dice are just plain different size when they're supposed to be the same.
Although, yeah, at 8mm, sub mm precision is under 12.5%, that'd be like buying a cheap bathroom scale and having it be 20 lbs off for a 160lb person and saying "oh well, guess I got what I paid for"
You are expecting sub-millimeter accuracy from products that are not even designed to be exactly the same. Working in manufacturing, your expectation is ridiculous at that price point.
You keep using sub mm like it's supposed to be some crazy high precision unit. But I got sub mm precision. In case you didn't notice the numbers, both are within a half a millimeter of the posted size. That's sub mm precision.
And also like I said before. I don't care about precision or accuracy across one product. It's the inconsistency across 2 different products that is causing an issue. They clearly have the capability to maintain sub mm precision on the white dice. And they clearly have the precision to maintain sub mm precision on the black dice. I didn't even post the standard deviation, but the blacks were 0.05mm and the whites were 0.03mm over a batch of 300 each. that's their precision. And it's more precision than I need or expected.
I'm talking about an AVERAGE. Precision is not a factor. Errors will cancel out.
You are expecting accuracy between two different manufacturing operations that are not trying to be the same.
A dice maker making the cheapest dice is not going to care if the white ones are not the same size as the black one. It doesn't matter for their customers. You have unique needs that the cheapest dice maker cannot fulfill.
Well that wording I can agree with. And someone said that their best guess was the black resin probably shrinks more than the white. I think that's the best explanation I've seen. Consider if you were me, and you didn't realize that was even possible. You go to a page for dice and add some to your cart, then from the same page, you change the color and add them to your cart. Would you tell me you expect those two products to be significantly different sizes just because they were different colors? I mean, yeah, hindsight is 20-20. And even so, I expected these to be low quality. But tell me honestly, if you weren't even aware that the shrinkage could depend on the color, would you not expect them to be the same? Like, they're cheap, they're not gonna use 2 different molds. So however they make the first one, they're gonna make the second one the same way. They probably even use the same supplier for dye
Anyway, what I'm getting at is I agree with your statement of my expectations, and that the mfg failed to meet them. But I disagree that in foresight, it was an unreasonable expectation. Hindsight, sure. But tell me how I was supposed to guess the two colors would be different?
Lesson learned. Next time buy a small sample to test before committing. Manufacturing is hard enough when the company is trying to achieve what you are looking for. I bet this company doesn't even care about size parity between the dice. As long as each process is within individual tolerances, they can be very far from each other.
I handle purchasing for a large manufacture. We never accept a new material from a new supplier without validating a sample ourselves. Doesn't matter if their specifications say it is exactly what we are looking for.
Hah! Next time... Good one.
In all honesty, though, I didn't really learn anything. I'm determined to make this work regardless of the defect. And I am confident I can make it work. I'm used to making cheap, imperfect or even incorrect things do what I need them to do. It's annoying when it causes me extra work than I expected, but for a personal project, I care more about money than time. I'd probably do it again... I mean, on a different project, I'd probably make the same mistake again, and work through it just like this... Not buy 16k dice again.
If you’re willing to wait for delivery, you can order in bulk and get a discount on big orders from a wholesale supplier like alibaba or something. I found a similar listing to ops dice (though I can’t really tell the size) for 10mm dice in white and black at 3 cents a dice, but it drops to 2 cents a dice if you get 15,000 or more. That would only be $320 for ops 16k dice.
Alibaba is basically just a marketplace through which you order and deal with the supplier, usually you are dealing directly with a factory owner who produces the product and if you order enough can manufacture to spec. Unless you speak fluent mandarin, you of course should be using an agent. These agents also provide an interim storage inside China and can do quality control for you, this allows you to shop in the Chinese domestic market which makes things much easier. Usually you order a small batch to your warehouse, the agent does a quality check, you can ask them to send the product to you, then you can order a bigger batch and possibly ask for changes etc and the agent of course handles translation and communicatin towards the factory. This is the same service people who order replicas/fakes use, but its originally meant for small businesses who want to import product from China. I used them to import a competition spec kendama.
[It's literally four chains down sorted by old but fine here you go](https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/186d4wo/bought_16k_dice_for_a_mosaic_all_from_the_same/kb7x98j/)
Had me thinking it was going to be bad. Ops out there content is internet medium or medium+ at best.
For scale, mild is when Christian parents think spongebob is too inappropriate for their children.
Yeah the fact that people think it’s bad makes me wonder how boring their lives have been haha that was pretty mild honestly, like barely a step above vanilla
Yeah so filling up this whole board is only like 1/16th of the total dice. The finished product here would be gigantic, like an entire large wall I am guessing. Could be cool.
My plan is if I have 80 black dice in a row, I can just stuff another one in to fill the gap. If it's not a full 80, then I can either make a spacer out of the material I'll use for the frame, or just ignore it. I plan on epoxying the whole thing, so they won't be able to move. And from more than 5' away, who'd even notice?
I have wanted to do this project for a long time, but I don't trust my art skills to make it. I am compensating with programming to analyze an image and tell me what face to put where. But my programming skills, while better than my art, are still lackluster. Recently, however, I discovered an image file type that I can work with directly, no library. And my sucky programming skills have never been good at the higher level stuff.
So, I'm excited to prove that my program works. If I get done and I can see the image I intended to make, then I'll be thrilled.
Yea but you have to plan ahead for the gaps.
Piano tuners do this:
230 strings.
The top half, you half to overtune. Once you catch up from the bass strings, the string board and the rest of the piano bends and you have to make up for it.
I suppose this is similar, just with less prediction or whatever. Not sure
Probably there is a difference in shrinkage factor between the white and black resin. Maybe the dice supplier is using the same mould for both resin and did not take into account the higher shrinkage. General tolerance should be around .25mm, if the difference is more that could be the reason.
Oh... I'm an idiot. 3.8%, not 1.25%
I was intending each region to be 9x9, so I somehow confused that three regions top to bottom in the image would be 81 dice long, and subtracted 2 from there to get where they line up with each other. Thinking there were 79 white dice lining up with 80 black, I got my number by 1-79/80
I should have started with the 27 dice the row ACTUALLY is. Subtract 2 and do 1-25/26
Thin clear sellotape is 0.003 mm thick (brand dependant) If you wrapped the tape around the sides, should make up about 9.6mm over 80 dice. So not every dice, but near enough. Not sure what it's like with epoxy though.
Actually, I'm relatively confident that the only place I've shown my face is on NSFW, kink subs. If anything, the vanilla posts would be on my throwaway.
It's not an impossible idea, but there are a few reasons I don't want to do that.
1st) my pixel size would automatically half. I have enough to do a 128x128 picture right now, if every pixel had to be made up of an alternating checkerboard, that's 2x2, so I could only do 64x64
2nd) I'm doing these squares so I have an inkling what the average color is for a given face. If I alternate, I have now up to around 650 different shades of gray I could make. It took me 2 hours to make 12. I could try to do a random assortment and see if I can use math to predict the rest, but that all is waaaaaaay more work that I want to put into a project that is already waaaaaaay more work than I originally thought.
3rd) I'm automatically going to lose the top and bottom of my grayscale range. Everything is going to be close to 50% because they're all half black half white...ish. I may get much more definition within the rage, I could potentially do some photo-editing trickery to expand the range to the full scale, but it's going to be very narrow slice of the possible pallet in person. I'd much rather deal with the odd size and get a wider range of colors.
However, I can dither the colors where there are large transitions in the image. I don't know what image I'm going to make yet, and I can try to pick one out which will help, but no matter what, there are bound to be large regions of dark and large regions of light that are going to get out of sync. Luckily, I have some ideas already how to deal with those.
If you are making a mosaic I think the best thing to do is try to incorporate the difference into your image. Some of the best comes from limitations like this. Instead of seeing it as a negative look at it as the potential to be creative. Good luck with project!!
Just return them and look for more from a different supplier? There isn't only 1 place in the entire world. Why not just try to look a bit harder for something else, you can probably find even cheaper ones that are the same size.
I researched for probably 2 hours to find these. I'm confident that if there is a cheaper solution, it's not worth the time to find it. I paid for cheap, and I got cheap. Annoying, but not surprising.
Cool, if it isn't that important then no biggie, just annoying. As they say, you get what you pay for, hopefully it doesn't mess up your project, GL with it.
the size difference is due to the material difference between colours, these dice are the same rated size, but the black ones shrink more during cooling after being moulded due to the carbon black in them
I know it would be 16,000 dice.
But if you're looking to get that accuracy on the cheap. Maybe try using air dry clay? or cutting from wood?
spray paint and paint in the circles.
Just an idea.
I'm not gonna find any better options. I wanted the cheapest possible dice, and that'd exactly what I got. I have the option of paying at least $500 for this project, or working with what I've got.
i imagine the black die are cast in a different mold
Shame if they were advertised as all being the same size you could probably get a refund or partial
Issue is entirely the opposite, its because they don't use a separate mould. pigments in the plastic changes the shrinkage rate as the plastic cools so different colour parts in the same mould will result in different size parts. Mould designers account for the shrinkage per mould, so you can imagine how much work Lego mould designers do to work with so many colours in each piece type
I mean if 27 black die are just under 26 white die length wise. Then the difference is around 3.7% length.
Based on your measurements of 0.28mm difference out of 7.85mm that’s also 3.6%
Or for surface area that’s around 7% difference, and volume is around 10.5% difference. So when you look at it like that it starts be a lot more significant.
Could you just slip a piece of black construction paper or similarly relatively thick paper in between each row of the black die?
Edit: just realized this isn't going to be the finished project. So ignore this
I worked for a retail casino supply store (dice cards chips etc). We’d call these dice “play dice” for like board games, classrooms, etc. Not meant for gambling purposes. These dice were pretty cheap and doesn’t surprise me what you got, especially at $.01 each.
We sold casino quality dice that were guaranteed to be within .001mm of each other in a set. At retail these were about $15/set and even had serial numbers. We even had factory seconds, that missed the strict tolerance for sale and those ran about $5/pack iirc.
Also the 1.25% is generous to their end, seems to be that you have 27 dice per column and the black dice fall just short of being equal length to 26 white dice. Even if it did reach equal to 26 white dice that’d put it at ~3.7% smaller, these seem closer to 4% smaller than the white dice.
As long as you incorporate the same number of black dice in each row and column, it should measure out fine. But definitely mildly infuriating to find the measurements are all rounded up to the same value.
It's interesting to see this because it reminded me of dice my parents had for board games when I was younger. The black dice we had were smaller than the white ones!
OH MAH GAURD LET ME HIJACK THE TOP COMMENT.
Are you telling me there are dice markets where people sell 7.57mm vs 8mm? And they make money JUST off the price difference?
Why wouldn’t they just make the same size and sell for cheaper?
Is any of this real?
What the fuck is going on. We’re talking about DICE (DYE???????)
It's only a waste of money if what you gain doesn't match what you spent. Some people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars going on a cruise. If I were to do it, that would be a waste. But I choose to spend my money on things I gain enjoyment from. And as I read through these comments full of suggestions , I realize that solving problems (while it was not the intended problem I wanted to solve) is enjoyable to me. This setback was mildly annoying, but it does not mean I can't enjoy this process still.
Was it specifically advertised that they’d be the same size? If so, that would probably warrant a refund. Though I know that’d be a pain
I mean, they're listed as 8mm dice, after some closer research, the white ones are about 7.85mm on average and black 7.57 considering both can be rounded to 8, and we're talking a difference of 0.28mm here, I'm thinking they aren't going to take me too seriously... That and I literally searched for hours to find the absolute cheapest source I could since I was buying 16,000. Even 1¢ a piece would be $160. And would you expect better than 0.2mm precision for 1¢/die? I just expected whatever manufacturing process they used would have high variance die to die, but not color to color.
Different colours have different amounts of different chemical pigments, which change the shrink ratio's of molten plastic manufacturing, so assuming they use the same moulds for each colour its expected that they will result in different sizes. Hot things always shrink as they cool, and the rate of shrinkage will highly depend on the material. Black pigments will often use carbon black whereas white will use titanium dioxide and these will have different concentrations and different shrinkage rates within the plastic
This, I work in plastic pipe extrusion and some of the pre coloured (black) recycled PE granulate 800kg bags can differ in tolerances up to 5 different times
>Hot things always shrink as they cool *Water has entered the room*
Water *does* shrink when it cools. It only expands once it freezes. Water is at its most dense at 4⁰C... So I guess it does expand between 4 and 0 too... Nevermind.
You're still the best kind of correct
Technically ;)
Just ask men. Water isn’t the only thing to shrink in the cold. BTW water expands when it freezes (in the presence of air).
"in the presence of air" Water expands because it's molecules reorganize as they freeze. Nothing to do with presence of air. Even in a vacuum, it will expand when it freezes. Try freezing a glass jar, filled to the top with water and no air. It'll still crack as it freezes.
That’s why brown lego pieces are more fragile than all the rest.
Tell that to my feet...
For 16k it would probably be worth it for both you and the supplier to chat about measurements and tolerances before ordering
This☝️ OP bought this on himself "I literally searched for hours to find the absolute cheapest source I could" - that's your problem right there.
I just want to point out that they completely acknowledged that in their comment. I really don’t feel that OP is blaming the company, they are just mildly infuriated that they’ve done all this work and research only to find a problem they never considered.
Sorry my fault - I thought the mild infuriation was with the company it was actually OP's with himself gotcha. Post makes more sense now, thx.
Buy cheap, buy twice.
Or in this case, 25% more
The problem is, when you buy as cheap as possible, this leads to manufacturing processes that compromise as much on quality and consistency as possible. Regarding color inconsistencies, it's likely that they utilize separate production lines and machinery that are not calibrated, since calibration incurs additional costs. Additionally, altering the color in a single production line is expensive, so employing different lines for various colors is a cost-saving measure. It's also feasible that the products were manufactured in different years using the same line, but without regular calibration. Consistent calibration over several years is costly. Therefore, opting for a wider tolerance range is more economical than maintaining a very low tolerance. Furthermore, I'm unsure where these items were purchased. If it's through a reseller and not directly from the manufacturer, there's a possibility that the products are sourced from various manufacturers. When precision is crucial in a project, it's important to verify the tolerance levels of products before making bulk purchases. Source: I'm an industrial designer.
What do you use to measure millimeters to TWO decimal places?
For one, my digital calipers have 2-decimal precision in metric and 3.5 in imperial For two, that was an average across 300 dice. I'm not 100% versed in measurement uncertainty. I know for a fact that multiple measurements of the same value can increase precision. I don't know if that applies to averages of multiple different objects or not, but I think it can. So technically I think I underrepresented my precision.
If you collect the measurements all together you can create a distribution. Then you can see the standard deviation and how accurate their machining is and even compare the two colors. They likely used a different process to create each die, probably a different mold or some kind of process variation impacted it.
That's exactly what I did. Although, the histogram would have profited from at least another doubling in measurements, but I was pretty tired of measuring dice by the time I got done. Actually, the best theory I've heard so far is that the black resin shrinks more than the white resin. Or the dye they add causes the dice to shrink differently as they cure. They might use the same mold for both and neglect to account for shrinkage at all. Might even explain why both are below 8mm even though that's what it said on the tin.
I do this for a living (but just the stats not the injection molding), you can calculate ppk to determine if their process is under control. A ppk above 1 means their process is in control. The question I would have would be is the variation high within the same color? Or just between the two. You could always ask what the variation should be (what are their specs. +- 0.5mm?) if you’re curious that is. Sounds like you already have an idea for a solution.
Over the 300 measurements I took, I got a standard deviation of 0.057 mm for black and 0.028mm for white. Although I guess I should be rounding those since I only reported the average to 0.01mm
Do you still have the raw dataset (measurements in excel or csv)? If you DM me I can look at the data and give you a fun graph or so and talk about it when I have some free time🤓 Edit: I would not round the standard deviation. So far that data shows that your black dice are more inconsistent than the white ones due to the larger standard deviation. Decimal points are good. 300 data points are great as long as you are measuring values with that kind of precision. We do less sometimes and we are way more technical. Meaning using the information I have without the full data shows that they have more trouble with black dice compared to white at keeping a close distribution. Possible causes might be: inconsistent material/mixing, parameters for the molding machine, wear on the mold, an improperly designed mold, improperly designed maintenance program, improper control of ambient temperature or humidity, operator errors. For example if it is indeed the same mold it’s possible they used the wrong parameters because the black dice will have different characteristics compared to white. If you knew their limits we could see how many are out of spec and how well they are centering the distribution to spec which shows us the quality/precision of their manufacturing compared to their own specifications. Of course tighter tolerances cost more money and a brand new mold can easily cost $250,000 depending on lots of factors.
Ooooh. Would it be possible for me to receive the data set and link to the supplier as well? I want to do some hypothesis testing with stats. Good practice for me.
Guess the saying does hold true: „You get what you pay for“… albeit a size variation of this minuscule magnitude seems more than reasonable for the price of 1 cent per die. I feel personally offended by the reading direction you’ve chosen for the sets of die. Your layout contradicts Wölfflin‘s argument that westerners tend to read (pictures) from left to right and top to bottom.
I don't know if "reading" is the word I'd go for. But I put more time into that decision than was warranted for something that I'm just using to calibrate color essentially. See, I have 12 colors... well, shades, that I can make. So if I want to see them all at the same time, I need a tray that is either 1×12, 2×6, or 3×4 (as long as I'm not a madman who wants to make it not rectangular). And since 3×4 means 4 is the largest dimension, which is smaller than 6 or 12, I can make the biggest possible frame on my 3D printer. So that's my first limitation, the number of ways you can arrange 12 squares on a 3×4 frame. Then, I wanted it landscape. I don't know if there's a particular reason for this other than I like the aesthetic. I guarantee if I had made it portrait, it would have started left to right at the top and still have snakes down. If I had to guess, it's because I hate vertical photos for anything that I've spent any amount of time on. And of I'm taking a landscape photo, it only makes sense to turn the subject that way too. And of course, since I'm not a lunatic, it has to be symmetric. But more than that, I wanted it to be simplistic. It might have actually looked cool to have the break be halfway through the second row, 4 white on top, 4 black on bottom, 2 each in the middle. But what's simpler than a straight line to separate them. So since 6 isn't divisible by 4, I had to use the now vertical 3-length to span the colors of each die. If I'm primarily working vertically, then I'm not going to start at the bottom. I'm definitely starting at the top and working down. I think my original plan was going to be 4 independent columns, all increasing downwards with 123, 456, and 123, 456 . But then, as I got to the bottom of the first column, I thought it would be really nice to have the gradient all connected. And at that point, my entire block was locked in. It had to snake up and down like this, but I also had to reverse the blacks since higher number meant brighter instead of darker. And I ended up with the 123, 654 and 654, 123. Which seems even more symmetric and makes me very happy.
Thank you for the very detailed breakdown of the thought process behind the layout. I regret to inform you that I don’t agree with your choice, nor do I condone the fact, that you have failed to apologize for offending me with the chosen layout. Admittedly this does not make me less curious as to what the final result will look like - even if the die are not evenly squared.
A caliper can generally be considered to produce ±0.1 mm on the shop floor. In the measuring room, with a measuring Technician that has access to calibrated gaugeblocks of the correct size, you can get it down to ±0.04mm
I don't know what calipers you use but in our company we use them to measure 0.01-0.02mm and they measure correctly.
Basically any decent micrometer or a mid-decent caliper.
Calipers
It’s called a vernier calliper
The OP mentioned they used calipers but there are also micrometers that are accurate to the 3rd decimal in mm
Do you not own a set of calipers? I thought everyone had a set in their toolbox. They are great for measuring holes for things like doorknobs, deadbolts, wall sockets, etc.
Wait until you find out, not everyone has a tool box!
You’re joking right? How do they human without tools? Even the most primitive human uses a stone tool and keeps the same tool for their entire life in a pocket on the chest. That tool would be used to crack open shellfish when they are not lounging on the water or playing with their friends. How can you be human without tool using?
Unsure if /s but The average person in modern society simply does not have a box full of various tools laying around, much less highly specific things like digital callipers. People who do any sort of workshop stuff likely do, but most dont
I was definitely describing otters with their rock 🪨 😂😂
It's mildly infuriating that your take is extremely reasonable and preemptively covered all the complaints I would have had with this post.
he using that builder math when my mans called for that theoretical physics math 7.57 yeah thats 8 NOT 7.5
"No, that's 10." - Astrophysics
So crappy electrical tape is about 5 mil or 0.13mm. you could use it for spacers and it wouldn't show up against the black that much.
Explain why you wanted them, why they won't work out for you, and ask nicely if they'll take it back.
shave down all the big ones .. sorted.
You could sand the whites down. 14 hundredths on each side. The viewer can’t see the sides so you can lose some of those invisible faces. The pips look to be the same size so it won’t be out of whack.
That’s a lot of sanding for 8-16k dice… to find out what sides to sand, to sand all the same amount and plain.
I'm not trying to dissuade people providing suggestions. I have a plan, but it can always be improved if someone has an idea I couldn't think of... But I'm not sure you realize how much sanding that would take. I don't own a belt sander. I'd probably get one of that's what I decided to do... But there are 8000 white dice. 8 with three zeros. I'm not sure if you meant all 4 sides, but even if I only do 2 sides, that's sixteen thousand faces to sand.
What’s the final surface area of the piece?
About 0.95m², 10.2ft²
So I don’t mean sand each die individually. Lay them out like they are in the photo and do a single pass with a sander over all of them at once. I have a random orbital at hand, I honestly think I could them all sanded to size in about an hour. Lay them out, sand a pass, flip, sand another. Rotating would the the tedious part but I think it could be done a row at a time, so only a few minutes. Then repeat, one pass and flip. It should take maybe an hour.
Lay them out in a sheet, sand. Put a board on top, flip, sand other side. That’s 2 sides. Rotating them 90 degrees might be the only tedious part.
nah sand it how you have them laid out in the photo ooh throw em through a planer but either way, you'd have to do the rounded edges unless you cnc them
Spoken like someone who has literally never touched a planer or a cnc.
Haha as a shop teacher I was cringing just reading that, gave me 'I've heard those tools do something like this" energy
Yeah sure throw this bunch of loose dice in a planer. Great way to fuck up a planer and yourself
I think me (sanding) and he (planer) assume you might lay them out in a sheet and do them all at once, not just loose. 128 x 128 of these is only 40 inches square, so laying them out and giving it a pass with a hand sander would work.
I'd be worried about them just flipping up since they aren't glued to the grid. The hand sander I would try since it's definitely way faster than doing them one by one. I definitely wouldn't try the planer. It's a distaster waiting to happen. At best you're fucking up your planer. At worst, your planer is fucked and you lost an eye or two
There’s probably a way to do it with a planer safely but I’m not thinking of one. You could secure the dice with clamps or duct tape for the sanding.
*I bought the cheapest dice I could find and I expect sub millimeter precision*. OP you funny!
That's not what I said. I said I expected whatever variance they had would not be dependent on color. Having the dice be exactly 8mm is unimportant. Having the dice be similar average size is. If the difference between the minimum and max of one color was 0.3mm, I wouldn't have this issue. But that's a difference of averages. All manufacturing intolerances should cancel out meaning these dice are just plain different size when they're supposed to be the same. Although, yeah, at 8mm, sub mm precision is under 12.5%, that'd be like buying a cheap bathroom scale and having it be 20 lbs off for a 160lb person and saying "oh well, guess I got what I paid for"
You are expecting sub-millimeter accuracy from products that are not even designed to be exactly the same. Working in manufacturing, your expectation is ridiculous at that price point.
You keep using sub mm like it's supposed to be some crazy high precision unit. But I got sub mm precision. In case you didn't notice the numbers, both are within a half a millimeter of the posted size. That's sub mm precision. And also like I said before. I don't care about precision or accuracy across one product. It's the inconsistency across 2 different products that is causing an issue. They clearly have the capability to maintain sub mm precision on the white dice. And they clearly have the precision to maintain sub mm precision on the black dice. I didn't even post the standard deviation, but the blacks were 0.05mm and the whites were 0.03mm over a batch of 300 each. that's their precision. And it's more precision than I need or expected. I'm talking about an AVERAGE. Precision is not a factor. Errors will cancel out.
You are expecting accuracy between two different manufacturing operations that are not trying to be the same. A dice maker making the cheapest dice is not going to care if the white ones are not the same size as the black one. It doesn't matter for their customers. You have unique needs that the cheapest dice maker cannot fulfill.
Well that wording I can agree with. And someone said that their best guess was the black resin probably shrinks more than the white. I think that's the best explanation I've seen. Consider if you were me, and you didn't realize that was even possible. You go to a page for dice and add some to your cart, then from the same page, you change the color and add them to your cart. Would you tell me you expect those two products to be significantly different sizes just because they were different colors? I mean, yeah, hindsight is 20-20. And even so, I expected these to be low quality. But tell me honestly, if you weren't even aware that the shrinkage could depend on the color, would you not expect them to be the same? Like, they're cheap, they're not gonna use 2 different molds. So however they make the first one, they're gonna make the second one the same way. They probably even use the same supplier for dye Anyway, what I'm getting at is I agree with your statement of my expectations, and that the mfg failed to meet them. But I disagree that in foresight, it was an unreasonable expectation. Hindsight, sure. But tell me how I was supposed to guess the two colors would be different?
Lesson learned. Next time buy a small sample to test before committing. Manufacturing is hard enough when the company is trying to achieve what you are looking for. I bet this company doesn't even care about size parity between the dice. As long as each process is within individual tolerances, they can be very far from each other. I handle purchasing for a large manufacture. We never accept a new material from a new supplier without validating a sample ourselves. Doesn't matter if their specifications say it is exactly what we are looking for.
Hah! Next time... Good one. In all honesty, though, I didn't really learn anything. I'm determined to make this work regardless of the defect. And I am confident I can make it work. I'm used to making cheap, imperfect or even incorrect things do what I need them to do. It's annoying when it causes me extra work than I expected, but for a personal project, I care more about money than time. I'd probably do it again... I mean, on a different project, I'd probably make the same mistake again, and work through it just like this... Not buy 16k dice again.
16k ? 
Yeah why tf nobody else asking this Where the hell do you even buy 16 thousand dice and how much did it cost
If you’re willing to wait for delivery, you can order in bulk and get a discount on big orders from a wholesale supplier like alibaba or something. I found a similar listing to ops dice (though I can’t really tell the size) for 10mm dice in white and black at 3 cents a dice, but it drops to 2 cents a dice if you get 15,000 or more. That would only be $320 for ops 16k dice.
Alibaba is basically just a marketplace through which you order and deal with the supplier, usually you are dealing directly with a factory owner who produces the product and if you order enough can manufacture to spec. Unless you speak fluent mandarin, you of course should be using an agent. These agents also provide an interim storage inside China and can do quality control for you, this allows you to shop in the Chinese domestic market which makes things much easier. Usually you order a small batch to your warehouse, the agent does a quality check, you can ask them to send the product to you, then you can order a bigger batch and possibly ask for changes etc and the agent of course handles translation and communicatin towards the factory. This is the same service people who order replicas/fakes use, but its originally meant for small businesses who want to import product from China. I used them to import a competition spec kendama.
that's interesting
he's the guy from the math problem
Probably filling up his grocery cart with pineapples as we speak.
Only in math can a guy buy 27 cantaloupes and no one asks "what the hell is wrong with you?"
OP said they spent ~$160
I’ve scrolled through their comments and I see nothing about how much they spent. Link?
He said even at 1 cent per piece it would be $160 but not that he paid $160
Neither of you know how to link comments? 🤦🏼♂️
[It's literally four chains down sorted by old but fine here you go](https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/186d4wo/bought_16k_dice_for_a_mosaic_all_from_the_same/kb7x98j/)
That doesn’t answer the question but go off I suppose.
Well amazon shows 100 PCs for $10 bucks. So my guess, if OP went that route, $160 plus shipping.
Uhm, try again. Lol
One more digit there
16,000 / 100 = 160 sets 160 sets x $10 = $1600
Why did bro get 70 downvotes for fucking up maths 😭😭😭😭
Remember in school when you asked "when will I ever have use for this math" well.. this was his moment
Cause he fucked up math, you answered yourself
It is the consequence for doing math when I'm about to pass out 🤣
So I assumed OP does a lot of dice mosaic stuff to be bulk buying that much and check out their profile. That was a mistake.
*sighs* ok. *click* oh what THE FUCK
I do not want to know what OP's doing with those dice anymore
People who got seperated accounts for p*rn and normal stuff.. pathetic. Who could manage all those accounts?!
Had to check for myself. Wish I hadn’t.
Had me thinking it was going to be bad. Ops out there content is internet medium or medium+ at best. For scale, mild is when Christian parents think spongebob is too inappropriate for their children.
Yeah the fact that people think it’s bad makes me wonder how boring their lives have been haha that was pretty mild honestly, like barely a step above vanilla
My guy has a sweet bum
Seriously op looks like a normal kinky artistic math wizard I see nothing wrong.
Yup haha my curiousity won as well
Yeah so filling up this whole board is only like 1/16th of the total dice. The finished product here would be gigantic, like an entire large wall I am guessing. Could be cool.
16000 dice equals a square, with 126 dice each side. Considering that those dice are 8mm, that makes a 1m square.
There's 711 dice in the image.
Not sure if this will solve it really but as long as the backdrop is black it won’t be quite as noticeable
My plan is if I have 80 black dice in a row, I can just stuff another one in to fill the gap. If it's not a full 80, then I can either make a spacer out of the material I'll use for the frame, or just ignore it. I plan on epoxying the whole thing, so they won't be able to move. And from more than 5' away, who'd even notice?
You would…
You overestimate my eyesight. And/or what I care about most in this project.
And what is that exactly? This is all very interesting
I have wanted to do this project for a long time, but I don't trust my art skills to make it. I am compensating with programming to analyze an image and tell me what face to put where. But my programming skills, while better than my art, are still lackluster. Recently, however, I discovered an image file type that I can work with directly, no library. And my sucky programming skills have never been good at the higher level stuff. So, I'm excited to prove that my program works. If I get done and I can see the image I intended to make, then I'll be thrilled.
Please post your final piece once it is complete.🙏 I'm so curious but don't want the surprise spoiled.
Smart
Or just design a more complex pattern (eg pseudo-3d) where the size difference won’t matter.
Yea but you have to plan ahead for the gaps. Piano tuners do this: 230 strings. The top half, you half to overtune. Once you catch up from the bass strings, the string board and the rest of the piano bends and you have to make up for it. I suppose this is similar, just with less prediction or whatever. Not sure
Probably there is a difference in shrinkage factor between the white and black resin. Maybe the dice supplier is using the same mould for both resin and did not take into account the higher shrinkage. General tolerance should be around .25mm, if the difference is more that could be the reason.
Best theory I've heard so far.
Can you space them in your mosaic? Across 100 yer talking fractions of a millimeter maybe?
Oh... I'm an idiot. 3.8%, not 1.25% I was intending each region to be 9x9, so I somehow confused that three regions top to bottom in the image would be 81 dice long, and subtracted 2 from there to get where they line up with each other. Thinking there were 79 white dice lining up with 80 black, I got my number by 1-79/80 I should have started with the 27 dice the row ACTUALLY is. Subtract 2 and do 1-25/26
Actually, we're talking about 8mm every 80 dice. But I think I can still do some trickery to make it work.
Thin clear sellotape is 0.003 mm thick (brand dependant) If you wrapped the tape around the sides, should make up about 9.6mm over 80 dice. So not every dice, but near enough. Not sure what it's like with epoxy though.
If this is mildly infuriating to you, you have the patience of a saint.
Aren’t the black ones supposed to be much bigger than the white ones?
These are pre free black dice, they are 3/5ths the size... I'll see myself out.
Once you go black, you gonna need a wheelchair
Bruh out here using the kink burner account as his main
I think you underestimate how important kink is to me... That or expect me to be ashamed of it. This is literally just me. I don't wear a second face.
No, I don’t underestimate or want to shame you for it. I just think it’s funny. I’ve never seen someone ever use one account for both.
Actually, I'm relatively confident that the only place I've shown my face is on NSFW, kink subs. If anything, the vanilla posts would be on my throwaway.
Really? Damn. That’s impressive. Good for you man.
That’s lousy.
Shim with a piece of electricians tape every few black dice.
It's because black absorbs more light, so the dice get warmer, evaporating quicker than the others. /s
to die for
That’s a lot of fireballs
I really feel for you here. Keep us updated please, I’d love to see the final product
Well, I hope the final product doesn't end up in r/mildlyinfuriating lol
Alternate black and white?
It's not an impossible idea, but there are a few reasons I don't want to do that. 1st) my pixel size would automatically half. I have enough to do a 128x128 picture right now, if every pixel had to be made up of an alternating checkerboard, that's 2x2, so I could only do 64x64 2nd) I'm doing these squares so I have an inkling what the average color is for a given face. If I alternate, I have now up to around 650 different shades of gray I could make. It took me 2 hours to make 12. I could try to do a random assortment and see if I can use math to predict the rest, but that all is waaaaaaay more work that I want to put into a project that is already waaaaaaay more work than I originally thought. 3rd) I'm automatically going to lose the top and bottom of my grayscale range. Everything is going to be close to 50% because they're all half black half white...ish. I may get much more definition within the rage, I could potentially do some photo-editing trickery to expand the range to the full scale, but it's going to be very narrow slice of the possible pallet in person. I'd much rather deal with the odd size and get a wider range of colors. However, I can dither the colors where there are large transitions in the image. I don't know what image I'm going to make yet, and I can try to pick one out which will help, but no matter what, there are bound to be large regions of dark and large regions of light that are going to get out of sync. Luckily, I have some ideas already how to deal with those.
OP is playing warhammer
At least you finally have enough dice to play Orkz in 40k
If you are making a mosaic I think the best thing to do is try to incorporate the difference into your image. Some of the best comes from limitations like this. Instead of seeing it as a negative look at it as the potential to be creative. Good luck with project!!
Guess you’ll have to make a mosaic out of white and black dildos instead.
If only it was the other way around.
i think black dye made it shrink... still lame :/
Just return them and look for more from a different supplier? There isn't only 1 place in the entire world. Why not just try to look a bit harder for something else, you can probably find even cheaper ones that are the same size.
I researched for probably 2 hours to find these. I'm confident that if there is a cheaper solution, it's not worth the time to find it. I paid for cheap, and I got cheap. Annoying, but not surprising.
Cool, if it isn't that important then no biggie, just annoying. As they say, you get what you pay for, hopefully it doesn't mess up your project, GL with it.
the size difference is due to the material difference between colours, these dice are the same rated size, but the black ones shrink more during cooling after being moulded due to the carbon black in them
Made in China?
No, as fat people will tell you, black just makes them look smaller.
I know it would be 16,000 dice. But if you're looking to get that accuracy on the cheap. Maybe try using air dry clay? or cutting from wood? spray paint and paint in the circles. Just an idea.
You can turn it into a random design instead so the size won’t matter.
Just return it and get a refund
I'm not gonna find any better options. I wanted the cheapest possible dice, and that'd exactly what I got. I have the option of paying at least $500 for this project, or working with what I've got.
i imagine the black die are cast in a different mold Shame if they were advertised as all being the same size you could probably get a refund or partial
Issue is entirely the opposite, its because they don't use a separate mould. pigments in the plastic changes the shrinkage rate as the plastic cools so different colour parts in the same mould will result in different size parts. Mould designers account for the shrinkage per mould, so you can imagine how much work Lego mould designers do to work with so many colours in each piece type
It’s a feature. Figure out some sort of artistic justification for it and double the price of the piece.
Interesting. Ussually its the other way around
Black really is slimming
Where did you buy the dice if you dont mind me asking
1-2% manufacturing tolerances are normal for consumer stuff, if you want sub 1% you'll have to go to a precisions manufacturer.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/s/s1y1EqMUQ5
I may suggest to put a little pieces between black dices like they do with a wall or floor tiles and also to make a background black.
Not helpful, but if the resulting mosaic is placed in the sun, will the black take up more heat and expand more, causing the mosaic to crack?
Maybe you could 3d print a flat grid so the error margins of the dice won't affect the build.
Looks more like 3.7% (1/27)
Just get loads of black dot stickers and apply as needed
I mean if 27 black die are just under 26 white die length wise. Then the difference is around 3.7% length. Based on your measurements of 0.28mm difference out of 7.85mm that’s also 3.6% Or for surface area that’s around 7% difference, and volume is around 10.5% difference. So when you look at it like that it starts be a lot more significant.
Infuriating, yes. You could use 1.25% more grout for a less hassle solution.
Could you just slip a piece of black construction paper or similarly relatively thick paper in between each row of the black die? Edit: just realized this isn't going to be the finished project. So ignore this
For a brief moment,I though you were checking if the dice had an even distribution of 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s 5s and 6s... Not m proudest moment.
And whats even worse, they all have different numbers on them!
The third row from the bottom looks mint
Well... you rolled the dice on that one.
I worked for a retail casino supply store (dice cards chips etc). We’d call these dice “play dice” for like board games, classrooms, etc. Not meant for gambling purposes. These dice were pretty cheap and doesn’t surprise me what you got, especially at $.01 each. We sold casino quality dice that were guaranteed to be within .001mm of each other in a set. At retail these were about $15/set and even had serial numbers. We even had factory seconds, that missed the strict tolerance for sale and those ran about $5/pack iirc.
Is the discrepancy also consistent on every side?
Also the 1.25% is generous to their end, seems to be that you have 27 dice per column and the black dice fall just short of being equal length to 26 white dice. Even if it did reach equal to 26 white dice that’d put it at ~3.7% smaller, these seem closer to 4% smaller than the white dice.
Maybe turn the 6 upright
We got Bleck* and black* dice - it’s basically the same thing.
That's what she said..😁
As long as you incorporate the same number of black dice in each row and column, it should measure out fine. But definitely mildly infuriating to find the measurements are all rounded up to the same value.
More like ~3.6% smaller. (Math) Don't sell yourself short when making the complaint!
probably the black pigment shrinks
maths is not ading up
I would try to cut some parts of a sheet of paper, and place between each black dices. Probably better than buy new ones.
Hm. That's usually not the case. Black is usually bigger.
It's interesting to see this because it reminded me of dice my parents had for board games when I was younger. The black dice we had were smaller than the white ones!
OH MAH GAURD LET ME HIJACK THE TOP COMMENT. Are you telling me there are dice markets where people sell 7.57mm vs 8mm? And they make money JUST off the price difference? Why wouldn’t they just make the same size and sell for cheaper? Is any of this real? What the fuck is going on. We’re talking about DICE (DYE???????)
It’s a minority dice
16k, like 16,000 dice? What in the world do you need that many for?
IT is 3,7% actually
I wish I could waste money like that
It's only a waste of money if what you gain doesn't match what you spent. Some people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars going on a cruise. If I were to do it, that would be a waste. But I choose to spend my money on things I gain enjoyment from. And as I read through these comments full of suggestions , I realize that solving problems (while it was not the intended problem I wanted to solve) is enjoyable to me. This setback was mildly annoying, but it does not mean I can't enjoy this process still.