This isn’t a competition entry since I’ve already made it, but more of a show and tell or for inspiration.
This device is made out of brass, aluminium and wood. It’s used for counting available spell slots in D&D. It has 18 small magnets to provide clicking locators for each of the sliding thingies. For each slider, one magnet is embedded in the back of the aluminium button, and one is free-floating behind the central brass sheet, which has ridges on the rear surface.
It’s made using a ShapeokoXL and a Nomad.
EDIT: Updated with narrative because of taskmaster Julien
This item is the latest iteration of several designs based on using magnets as position indicators. Each design used hidden ridged surfaces and a second set of magnet to give a clicky positivity to moving the sliders.
Originally we had the front set of magnets sitting on the surface freely, as in this design:
but in play testing it was awful since a metal ruler would stick to it and pull all the outer magnets off the front.
To counter this, we decided to to embed (technically hammer) the magnets inside the back of aluminium buttons. This involved making these on the Nomad:
on mass, like this:
These are the parts that are involved in the device. This shows the ridge-backed inner sheet that creates the click. The inner sheet is thin and there is a small cavity in the wood, so it actually resonates and makes a satisfying sound. I claim this as deliberate, but facts might call it serendipity:
The wooden parts and the main pockets are done on a ShapeokoXL. The engravings and buttons are done with a naked Nomad. The design is done with designing
We also explored far more complex versions of this device… some with an embedded ESP32
powered by a rechargeable battery and some custom firmware (you can’t take the software engineer out of the maker sometimes):
but we’ve currently gone with simplicity as per the top design.