Paintable Pixels Heart Fidget

SO, I love multicolor printing, but it's generally a nightmare customizing something that someone else made, especially if it's just an STL file. Doubly so if you really want the colors to pop.

It got me thinking: What if the fidget was specifically easy to paint and customize? And thus, this was made.

Each "piece" of the fidget is topped with 64 voxels (aka pixel cubes). Use the painter in PrusaSlicer to color each voxel individually (Use bucket fill, it will cover the entire voxel and make sure there's enough underlying color to make the top of the pixels pop). THOUGH, the model is made up of a lot of tiny pieces, and there's up to 4,672 voxels for you to color, so your computer may be a little slow while slicing.

If you need to bulk assign the voxels to be a specific extruder, all of the "Body" pieces in the 3mf are the pixels. Select all of those and assign to extruder of choice. Other parts, like "Center Body", compose the main part of the fidget.

There is also "refined" version to download, where the pieces are slightly thicker on top/bottom, the print is a little floppier, and the number of pieces have been consolidated where appropriate. I haven't painted that one yet, but if I do, I'll upload them there. If you're making your own from scratch, I'd recommend that one.

Again, when painting your own, make sure to use bucket fill. This will cover the entire voxel in a single color, maximizing the print quality (see how it goes down the edge of the print's side)

If you make your own customized heart, please share the remix on here. I'd like to see what better artists than I can paint with voxels 😝 And if people like the overall idea, let me know, because I can explore ways to make a toolkit of these pieces, where it's even easier to design any shape or apply the pixel art.

Nitty gritty on the print:

• Use a 0.4mm nozzle and 0.45 perimeter width. This should be default for most printers.

• If your EM isn't dialed in, you may get pieces sticking after printing. I print most PLAs with an EM of .98 or so as my personal default, FYI.

• You can print the multicolor side face down for better squish of the perimeters and less filament used for the wipe tower. It will make the colors a little bolder, but if you're over extruding, the pixels might look less sharp.

• USE BUCKET FILL WHEN PAINTING THE VOXELS. All caps here in case you missed it previously.

• Dry your filament. Damp PLA never makes anything fun, especially with lots of pieces and color changes.

And a huge help I discovered in painting mine:

• Take a screenshot of the heart in PrusaSlicer, put the screenshot in your favorite painting app, and scribble out your mockup on that. Then you can use the basic shape of the grid to customize each 64 voxel group at a time.

• It was really daunting and unfun to paint the image when I was trying to freehand in the slicer with no reference. But sketching it up elsewhere made the actual painting experience fun.