Pixel Art Penny Connector

thingiverse

I'm a huge fan of Tony Youngblood's pixel art model, and the way it uses a penny as a connector is pure genius (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3080498)! Unfortunately, these same connections create a couple of issues. First, they add an excessive amount of weight to whatever you're making. A single penny may not weigh much on its own, but once you have enough to assemble even 100+ block pieces, the weight quickly becomes overwhelming. The second problem is sourcing enough pennies to make the connections. Even after thoroughly searching my couches, vehicles, and night stand, I was only able to scrounge up barely enough to create the center of my project. So I started thinking: why not 3D print a coin? I spent hours scouring the internet for models of coins that would work for this purpose but couldn't find any suitable options. That's when I decided to visit the United States Mint website and take a closer look at the actual dimensions of a penny, using Fusion 360 to model them myself. It wasn't particularly challenging, but I thought it was worth sharing these models with others. As an added bonus, I included a 50% scaled version of a penny for anyone who wants to print pixel blocks at half scale. This turned out to be incredibly useful when creating higher-resolution images or building smaller projects that don't take up the entire wall. In any case, I hope you enjoy these models and have fun making some amazing pixel art!