Customizable Word Snowflake

thingiverse

I have enjoyed printing f*ckflakes for several years but decided it was time to design it in OpenSCAD instead of Inkscape. Since it worked well for one word, I decided to make more… one for every one of my children, nieces, and nephews. You can use any font that works with OpenSCAD (though you may have to re-install it if you are on Windows and it is only installed for your user instead of “all users”). If you don't want to load it up locally in OpenSCAD and are fine with the limited font selection at http://fonts.google.com then you can use the online customizer. Tips for using the file: start with the font and text that you want. You might experiment with capital vs lowercase. Adjust the spacing of the font so that most/all of the text is continuous. Move to the layout section and adjust the number of times the text is used to whatever you like (I used between 5 and 9). Adjust the horizontal offset so that the text touches the middle circle and then rotate the text as you like… I usually adjusted it until each end of the text was connected to something (or a letter towards the end of the word was connected to something) so that the snowflake was less fragile. Once it looks acceptable, move on to the hanging section and adjust the text so that the end of the word is pointed straight up. The hole offset can then be altered up or down until it connects to the text. At this point, I rendered the model, saved it, and brought it into my slicer. I resized all of mine to 125mm and deleted anything unconnected (i.e. the dot of i or j characters). I've included the snowflakes I generated including multiple versions of a f*ckflake and the snowflakes I generated for family - Jaxon, Phoenix, Leila, Carson, Olivia, Amelia, Grandma, Grandpa.