Catan Hexatower Design Experiment

I was considering purchasing the new Catan Hexatower dice tower by Gamegenic. 

But I had a few questions.

• Would it roll a standard set of polyhedral?
• How many dice can fit inside it?
• How big is it ???
• Would it work with my dice tray?

I googled around and found the dimensions on the product page (102 x 89 x 41mm) and the general consensus was Catan dice were about 20mm which is bigger than most polyhedral dice so I thought it should work okay ... but it still niggled me.

Then I thought.... what do the internals look like. My first thought was it might just work with one internal slot and the hexagon slope at the bottom. I started to draw it in Inkscape to check the dimensions. I guessed a 51mm sided hexagon should be 102mm one way and possibly 89mm the other way. This was confirmed by drawing it up in Inkscape and then I thought... I could just keep going and make this out of cardboard.

Next, I just marked it out on some cardboard and cut out with a scalpel. I added another tab for the internal slot with the same dimensions as the sides. I scored the inside of the folds to make it easier to fold up and just used sticky tape to hold it together.

The first experiment found that the bottom slope of the hexagon was not enough to eject the rolled dice. But then I found the adding a second longer slot from the back of the hex to the mouth was enough to eject the dice.

So all of my questions pretty much answered. I could actually fit 3 sets of dice inside the hex. The dice rolled freely through the hex if you only used 3-5 at a time. It worked okay with my dice tray. The dice pictured below were all rolled 3 at a time consecutively without moving them after they landed.

The only hassle I had with the design experiment was that it is a bit light and unstable. I can only presume the real Hexatown has some ballast in the base which could be easily hidden between the exit slot and base. The external wrapping band might improve stability too.