Emoji Meeples Maker

I love playing board games, and unboxing a new game with fresh meeples is a highlight of my life! With the OpenSCAD contest in full swing, I've been inspired to mix my board gaming passion with my 3D printing addiction.

Through a lot of trial and error, I discovered an effective approach to coloring the meeples. Initially, I extruded the emoji face from the meeple body and hoped users could navigate the 'Paint' tool in Bambu Slicer to manually paint the necessary areas. This method was problematic and confusing, applied color only one layer deep resulting in faint coloring, and left a raised edge on the meeple face. By saving the body STL and face STL separately and loading the face STL as a 'part' on the body STL, users can simply select the part and choose their filament color. This method works perfectly in Bambu Studio.

Instructions:

1. On Makerworld, click 'Customize' button: Begin by clicking the 'Customize' button to start creating your emoji meeples. 

2. Modify the 'emojis' input: Enter your selection of emojis to be rendered. Use https://emojihub.org for emoji lookup. 

3. Adjust `build_plate_size`: Sets area meeples will be placed. For example, for the A1 Mini, this value should not exceed 180, since the build plate for A1 Mini is 180x180.

4. Set `double-sided` to true: This will produce an emoji face on both sides of the meeple.

5. Set ‘meeple_size’: Choose the meeple size. Recommended size is 24 to 32 for a 0.4mm nozzle, and 16 for a 0.2mm nozzle.

6. Generate and download 'body' STL: Choose `body` from the render dropdown, click `Generate`, then `Download` to download the STL file.

7. Generate and download 'face' STL: Now choose `face` from the render dropdown, click `Generate`, then `Download` to download the STL file.

8. Open `body` STL file in Bambu Studio: Import the `ParametricModelMaker.stl` file into Bambu Studio. The file may be in your `Downloads` directory.

9. Load `face` STL: Right-click the model in Bambu Studio, select `Add part`, then select `Load`. Import the `ParametricModelMaker(1).stl` file from your Downloads folder.

10. Change to 'Objects' view: Change the filament colors for both parts to different colors.

Tips for Efficiency

- Color Changing: Note that the color changing process adds significant time to the print. Whether printing 1 meeple or 34, the time remains the about the same. Also the wasted filament decreases with more meeples printed: 1 meeple = 12g wasted filament, 34 meeples = only 3g wasted filament, when printing with the 0.2 nozzle. This encourages you to print more Emoji Meeples on a single plate!

Attributions

This project is based on an original code file by buckyball which can be found at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:22696/files. The original code was licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution license (CC BY). Significant modifications and enhancements have been made to the original code, resulting in a substantially different final product.

I also gained inspiration from MakerWorld user @Yarn's Stamp Creator Check out Yarn's models here: Yarn's Models.

Please post your pictures and print profiles to share with the community.

Enjoy!