Mexican Train "Double 12" Domino Set

WARNING!  If you choose to print these on an Ender 3 style FDM machine, using 100% infill as I recommend for weight, this set could take up to four days to print and will utilize just about a full 1kg spool of filament.

Modeling an entire 91 tile double 12 domino set was a little crazy, but printing the set is full blown madness!  Anybody who prints this set is obviously a complete psychopath!

Printing an entire 91 piece set of domino's is NOT particularly cost effective.  A 91 piece set using pips rather than digits can be had for less than $10, which is roughly half the cost of the spool of filament required to print these.  I've seen sets with different colored digits for around $20 and they're ready for play right out of the box.  The one silly benefit in printing my own set is that I can reprint a tile that becomes damaged rather than having to replace an entire set.  It seems that every set I've ever played with has at least one tile that is somehow marked, either due to factory defect, or later by player damage.

NOTE:  When I first embarked on this tile set adventure, I did so with the intent that I would print the shells of the tiles in white.  After printing and assembling a few demo tiles, I decided that printing the shells in white allows the number color and dividing line color to bleed through the thin white faces, resulting in an unattractive tile.  I then printed some test pieces using black shells, and while of course the underlying colors don't bleed through the faces, those underlying colors REALLY need to have HIGH contrast to the black shells. Subsequently, I haven't enough different light colors to contrast the black, so instead of working with the three limited colors that looked good through the black face, white, yellow, and bright green, that I would prefer to keep the underlying color as one simple color for both numbers and dividing line.  I'll be making my entire set with black shells and bright green numbers/dividing lines.  Doing so also simplifies the tile design to require three printed pieces per tile rather than five.

Many of my friends and neighbors enjoy playing the popular domino game “Mexican Train”.

A while back, I published a printable engine for use with the game:  https://www.printables.com/model/613817-mexican-train-dominos-engine

I modeled that engine simply because the engines that came with my wife's set were ugly compared to other sets she'd been playing with.

I thought then that it would be nice to print an entire 91 piece set of tiles for the game, however, my hands are not steady enough to paint in all the numbers, which tend to be preferable to tiles with only single colored pips, so I back-burner-ed the idea of making a whole set due to how tedious it would be to make such a set.

A good friend of mine, “BrknArrw” recently published a three row by five tile domino tray:  https://www.printables.com/model/1100736-mexican-train-dominos-tray so I thought I might revisit the idea of making fully printable tiles for the game.

Each of the 91 tiles for the game is in five pieces that are intended to be glued together.  It will definitely take some time to print all those tile pieces, and once they're done, each tile will still need to be assembled, so I'm not sure if this set will generate any interest, however, I'll publish it anyways.

I decided I wanted to see how the tiles would look with black shells and a single high contrast color for filling in both the numbers and the divider line.  Using a single piece filler knocks the piece count of the individual tiles from five to three.  While printing the entire set with only one background color will make assembly a bit quicker, it won't do much, if anything to spare people from a stupidly long print time…

I modeled the tiles in five pieces so they could all have an identical base, yet custom faces, a divider line between the two number faces, and a different color to show through the faces for each number.  Tedious and time consuming the job may be, but at least I'm not having to struggle trying to paint each of the numbers by hand individually…

I plated the parts of this set so they will fit a build plate measuring 220mm X 220mm, which most FDM printers are capable of handling, but I'll include all the individual model pieces as well for manufacturing a single replacement tile.  I've included STL's for all the individual faces so that if a tile becomes damaged, one could simply print the individual face for that tile.  I may also come back later and plate the faces required for a double six and double nine set as well, but as I said, all the individual faces are here, so if anyone wants to print sets for other domino flavors, have at it.