The great thing about 3D printers is that they can make almost anything these days. The bad thing about 3D printers is that you can make almost anything with them.
There are some obvious, actually illegal things that will get you in trouble if you print them. Though I won’t mention them here, you can get on a watchlist on your own without my help! Then there are things that are legal, but they’re a bad idea to 3D print. But what about things that aren’t necessarily illegal, and are technically fine to print, but are also really unethical?
Loaded dice
If you’ve seen the movie “Casino”, you know to leave these at home
In case you somehow don’t know, “loaded” dice are designed to fall on a specific number almost every time. In a fair die, there’s an equal chance of landing on any given number, but if you change the weight distribution of the die to favor a specific number on the bottom, then you can control which number shows at the top.
Traditionally, this is done using metal weights inside the dice, but with a 3D printer, where you can design the interior structure precisely, all you have to do is determine where the weight of the infill is. Indeed, with RevK’s Loaded Dice, you need to set the infill density to 95% for it to work, and there are six models in total, each favoring a different potential number.
Given how light PLA is, it’s not really obvious that these dice don’t have a uniform weight distribution. But a much larger issue would be that the dice were 3D-printed in the first place. So it’s not like you’re going to surreptitiously switch these out for store-bought fair dice. That said, people are getting really good at processing 3D prints so that you can’t even tell they were made with a 3D printer.
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A card shuffler that deliberately deals winning hands
Though, to be fair, you need more than just a 3D printer for this one!
You may have heard (as reported by the BBC) of those rigged high-stakes underground poker games involving NBA players and lots of high-tech cheating equipment. Well, if you look into it, you’ll see that part of the scam involved a modified casino-grade card shuffler. This device is supposed to ensure a fair deal in games like Texas Hold’em, but by hacking and modifying the device, you can precisely determine where any given card is at any time.
Now, that machine costs a fortune, and I guess those illegal modifications aren’t cheap either, but as you can see above, a Reddit user used a 3D printer, a Raspberry Pi, and some other miscellaneous electronics and parts to make their own.
It’s an incredibly cool project, and it would make you the god-king of your local poker game, but I suspect it’s going to be hard to convince your friends that they should use your homemade card shuffler when the next game night rolls around.
If you really need to get the last word in
Some people take Scrabble far too seriously, and although this wonderful 3D model set of Scrabble tiles by jjpowelly are meant to let you replace lost tiles without buying a whole new box, clearly unscrupulous players could print out extra tiles and secrete them up a sleeve to gain an advantage.
If you look closely at any of these tiles, it should be apparent that they are 3D-printed, but if you only slip in one or two letters, I bet you could get away with it. If you’re playing with all 3D-printed tiles anyway, well, all bets are off, I guess.
Printing your own tabletop miniatures is a gray area
What would the emperor do?
Credit: Sydney Louw Butler / How-To Geek
In the world of tabletop gaming, 3D printing has been rather controversial. This isn’t about gaining an unfair advantage in the actual gameplay (which isn’t how something like Warhammer works anyway) but more about copyright and intellectual property. With resin 3D printers and even modern FDM printers, you can create high-quality miniatures and then paint them.
The tabletop community and the companies who sell official models to sustain themselves have had to reckon with this, and official games now have rules on what pieces may be 3D-printed, or how much of a given model is allowed to be 3D-printed. In the end, if you’re using 3D printing as a way to avoid paying for (admittedly expensive) official models, there’s certainly an ethical dimension to that. For no other reason than the hobby itself might disappear if this technology puts its custodians out of business.
Follow your own conscience
I can’t stop you from printing whatever you want, and if you’re just making stuff for your own personal amusement, there’s no harm in it. However, with great power comes great responsibility. And owning a 3D printer gives you more than enough power to act in a fair and just manner.