I’m still working on my Ice Cream Truck this weekend, but I had to stop and knock out another design that I’ve been thinking on for a little while now.
Looking through all of the “airless” designs a while back, I had noticed that there was one obvious omission from the airless collection, airless billiards. I thought for sure an airless 8-ball would do well, so I made a quick one and while making that I started to think about a magic 8-ball and how cool it would be if I made a liquid free, 3d printable version.
My initial thought was to just make a hollow ball with four magnets around the window and a dice floating around inside the ball that was also covered in magnets so you would just shake it until the magnets on the die connected with the magnets on the window. The problem with that is it would be super noisy as well as potential damage to the ball, window and die when shaking it. At an impasse, I decided to move onto other projects and let the idea of a liquid free magic 8-ball marinate for a while.
The other day, while I was working on the Ice Cream Truck, the answer of how to make a liquid free magic 8-ball struck me out of the blue and while it still needs a bit of tweaking (the words are a bit off center), I should have this uploaded tomorrow. It still uses magnets to “grab” an answer, but sometimes you need to give it a little shake as seen in the video.
EDIT: I have no intention of releasing that airless 8-ball or an airless billiards set, but would love to see one out there if anyone is looking for an idea. I also think a Voronoi billiard rack would be cool.