Adjustable Improved Duplo Brick Generator with Text

thingiverse

I'm teaching myself to code 3D models in OpenSCAD, so I thought I'd enhance the basic 3D text on a cube function that's already available in OpenSCAD examples. This way, studless blank block tops can become fun LETTERS, NUMBERS, and SYMBOLS! I printed some un-remixed standard bricks and noticed they're too hard to assemble, so I tweaked the stud design by adding a sloped area to ease alignment, as shown in green in the preview. Since I own a dual extruder printer with mediocre quality, I thought it would be possible to generate the letter and brick separately so they can be printed with distinct colors. This has the added benefit of being able to create an embossed brick with adjustable letter inset depth. You can make the color letter flush with the top of the brick so it's a non-protruding inlay by making the letter height the same as the embossed inset. Alternatively, you can try no inset and switching filament on the first letter layer to use a regular machine to create the 2-color design. I've added a function to generate thin base plates, great for placing the letter bricks on. I had some studs break off, so I increased the surface area where they attach so they'll be a little more reliable. I plan to look into adding an interlocking plate system so folks with small printers can build huge base plates. In another major update, I've added rounded edges to the brick to get rid of the super sharp corners they had. You can now pick from a list of fonts and made the 4-section flex central cylinder optional for easier printing and safer for children (less danger of small bits randomly breaking off). As well as a couple dimensional tweaks (mainly taller studs) to adjust the dimensions for correct interaction with real LEGO Duplo. The rounded edges slow down rendering quite a bit, so let me know if you experience any problems with customizer. As a precaution, I'm turning the roundness of the edges to the minimum of 5, but the bricks in the STL files were created with a roundness of 30. I'm including the default font and a font (Segoe Print) from my local machine via OpenSCAD as pre-generated STL files of letters and numbers. Let me know if you have something in mind and I'll do my best to generate more.