Customizable LEGO compatible Text Brick Key Fobs by Lyl3

Last crawled date: 3 years, 3 months ago

Customizable LEGO compatible Text Brick Key Fobs
This is a customizer for creating LEGO® compatible rectangular bricks with text engraved on the sides (all 4 sides) and a half ring on one end to attach a key ring. You can of course also use it to create bricks without any text. It can create bricks as small as 1x1x1 (plate height) or as large as 48x48x18 (6 normal bricks high).
The customizer, by default, creates LEGO-sized bricks only. All dimensions are accurate, but it has a tolerance parameter so the dimensions can be tuned to your printer/filament so that they have a perfect fit with one another and with real LEGO® blocks. Real LEGO blocks have a horizontal play of 0.2 mm so that they can be connected to one another. So a 4x2 brick is 31.8x15.8 mm and a 6x2 brick is 47.8x15.8 mm, for example. The tolerance is in addition to the required 0.2 mm play and is subtracted from both sides of all walls so that the default tolerance of 0.05 would make the previously mentioned bricks 31.7x15.7 mm and 47.7x15.7 mm.
All LEGO dimensions are adjustable parameters, so if you are having trouble with the fit and need more control than the tolerance parameter provides, you can override any of the LEGO dimensions.
This is a simple remix of my Customizable LEGO compatible Text Bricks
2020-10-28 Update. I added the option for raised text in addition to the original recessed text.
Printing Recommendations
If a brick will be connected to other bricks you don't want it to have an elephant's foot. I usually have the initial layer horizontal expansion parameter in Cura set to -0.2 mm to prevent elephant's feet, but for the LEGO bricks with a default tolerance of 0.5 mm this must be reduced to -0.14 in order for the under-tubes to be printed on the first layer.
For the best looking brick, you'll want the top surface of the brick part of the model to be a single continuous print from one corner to the other instead of going around the areas where the studs will be added in later layers. To accomplish this in Cura, set the Skin Expand Distance to 2.2.
Running the Customizer
When last checked, the Thingiverse customizer works only on the Firefox browser. More importantly, Thingiverse hasn't run their customizer queue since Jul 10, 2020 so until they fix that issue, you will have to install and run OpenSCAD on your own computer to process the code to create your own customized models. See DrLex's instructions linked below for further details.
How to Run Customizer on Your Own Computer
If you are running the code on your own machine using OpenSCAD, you will need to install the font(s) on your system. The fonts are available to download from the Google Fonts repository. The default font is available at:
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Roboto
There are two choices for adding a font to OpensSCAD:
1) Install the font to the system. The procedure for adding system fonts is dependant on what operating system and what version you are using (Ubuntu Linux 16.01, Ubuntu Linux 20.04, Windows 7, Windows 10, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, etc. ). If you don't know how to install a font on your system then search the web for instructions.
2) Add the font to the folder that contains the OpenSCAD file that you want to use the fonts. You will also have to add to the OpenSCAD file the 'use ' command substituting the filename of the font for "fontname.ttf".
For additional details, see the Using Fonts and Styles section on the following page:
https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenSCAD_User_Manual/Text
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