May 15, 2009 2:05am by Steve | 
This is my first realization of an idea that I’ve had for a while now. It is an auto-loading dice tower made out of LEGO bricks.
Watch how the mechanism works below…
The hardest part was figuring out how to drive the trap door at the top of the tower with the lever. The trap door is required in order to give the landing platform enough time to get back to its start position before the dice come through the tower. It took a lot of trial and error to get it to its current state… which I would consider to be barely adequate.
As it is, you need to run the lever at a consistently brisk pace in order for the whole thing to work. I’d rather have it be idiot-proof whereby the trap door won’t open until the landing platform has completely returned to its position.
It will be hard for me to break this down in order to attempt an improved version. 
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Brilliant!
AWESOME!
Could you possibly tell me what set(s) of Lego were required to build that? It might be worth looking into, and is just too darned cool.
Shoot, this tower was not built with any specific sets, but rather with a mix of my LEGO collection. There is obviously some Technic pieces needed to make it function. Beyond the Technic there isn’t much in there that is unique.
I don’t suppose you’d consider sharing the details of how the trap door is mechanized? This is rather ingenious for a first version. (Awesome work!)
Hmmm… I was hoping that it would be apparent in the video. There’s nothing really special about the trap door other than what you can see in the video. You just need to get the handle to both close and open the door with the downstroke/upstroke respectively. In this version, when in the up position, the door is held in place with nothing but friction from the internal surface of the tower. I didn’t really like this, but it did seem to work without issue.