2 · Who you are
An SVG is best — its shapes come through exactly. A PNG,
JPEG or WebP works too: it is traced, its background taken away, and its colours boiled down
to the few flat ones the logo is really drawn in. Until you pick one, the card shows a
made-up sample. A simple logo builds in a second; a detailed illustration, with hundreds of
shapes, can take up to a minute each time something changes.
Off, the rectangle or white page a logo is so often exported on is taken
away and the card follows the logo itself. On, the background is part of the logo — for
an app icon or a badge whose square is the point.
The logo on the back as well, right behind the front one and in the same
filaments — no extra head. Turn the card over and you see its mirror image, filling exactly
the same outline. The back then has no room for the tap mark or a QR code.
Name, company, title, phone and email are the five every guide to business
cards agrees on, and five to seven things is where a fob stops being read. Leave any of
them empty and the line goes away. A long one shrinks to fit; past the point where that
stops being printable, put a | where it should break instead.
The pet's name goes on the front, as big as the tag takes it. The phone
number is always set in the plain bold sans whatever face the name is in, and the fit
shrinks the name first and the number last — a long number is split over two lines
when that lets it come out bigger. Put a | in it to choose the break yourself.
The extra line is for “I'm microchipped”, a second number or a street; leave it
empty and it goes away.
One word is what these are for. It is set tight, welded into a single
piece and given a tab for the ring; anything the weld leaves loose — the dot of an
i — is bridged on.
The words are lit through the face, as large as it will take
them. | splits them over two lines. Leave this empty and give it an SVG
instead — a logo is lit exactly the way the lettering is.
The words get cut clean through the plate, as large as the
plate will take them. | splits them over two lines. Leave this empty and give it
an SVG instead — the artwork below wins over the words either way.
Flat fills only — strokes and live text
are ignored, so export it as outlines first. Every fill becomes one hole, whatever colour it was.
Goes beside the name. Flat fills only — strokes, gradients
and text objects are ignored, so export the logo as outlines first. Each fill colour in the
file goes to whichever of the four colours it is nearest.
Replaces the whole front with your own artwork. Draw it on a
rectangle in the body colour and it comes out at the rectangle's size.
3 · How it looks
The longest side of the card, not counting the keyring tab. A
business card is 85 mm across; 60 to 80 still reads as a card and fits a wallet.
Follows the logo: every colour in it is traced and merged, grown by the
border and cut out along that line, like a die-cut sticker. Pieces that stand apart are bridged
until it is one card. A long thin wordmark may leave no room for the chip — give it a
rounded rectangle or a disc behind it instead.
Each colour of the logo is its own filament, inlaid 0.6 mm into the front
and flush with it. A four-head printer has one head for the card and three for the logo, so a
logo with more colours has its closest ones merged. A logo colour that matches the card's own
— white lettering on a white card — is simply the card showing through, and costs no
head at all.
A tab stands off the outline at that corner, like a keyring fob's. A hole
goes through the card itself, as far into the corner as it will go while staying clear of the
logo — and when there is no room for that, it becomes a tab rather than a hole through
your logo. The readout says which you got.
Follows the letters: the box is the word's own outline — every
letter grown by the margin, the gaps between them closed and the insides of the O's filled,
so the sign is one rounded shape hugging the word, the way a channel-letter sign is. The two
sliders below are then the most room the word can have, and the box comes out as big as the
word needs. Rectangle is the plain box, and the one the wall mounts fit.
Size it to what it goes on. A cup or a cake makes the stencil a
disc a little wider than the rim, so it rests there instead of falling in, and the artwork is
fitted to the opening — dust cocoa over a cappuccino, or icing sugar over a cake. The
preview stands it on the thing, to scale, so you can see how big it really is. Sizes are the
usual ones; measure yours and pick a round plate if it is different.
The plate left round the cut: what you hold, and what stops the
overspray. The artwork fills whatever is left.
The unlit border round the lettering. It never goes under the wall
plus a millimetre: a letter out there would be cut into the wall itself, where there is no
diffuser behind it to light it or to hold it on.
Every counter — the middle of an O, the triangle in an A
— is an island once the cut goes through, and an island with nothing holding it falls out.
Each one gets a bar of plate left across it. At 0 they come away as loose pieces.
Thin is the point: every millimetre is a millimetre of wall the
paint has to reach round, which is what blurs an edge. 0.8 mm is four layers and still peels off
in one piece.
Front face to back, and so how far the light has to spread before it
reaches the diffuser. Under about 12 mm of clear air you can count the LEDs through the letters;
the readout says how much is left once the face and the lid have taken theirs.
The translucent sheet printed across the whole inside of the face.
It is what turns a row of LEDs into an evenly lit word — and it is also what holds the
middle of an O on, so unlike a stencil there is nothing here to bridge.
Five lines of a 0.4 mm nozzle at the default: stiff enough to hold the
lid without bowing, and opaque enough that the light leaves by the letters.
Right and left are as you look at the lit front. Through the back, the
lead leaves by a notch in the edge of the lid at that end: open to the edge, so the cable drops
in rather than being threaded, and closed into a hole by the wall once the lid is in — so
nothing shows from the front. Through the bottom wall is a notch in the back edge of the
wall, cut a lid deeper so the cable passes under a lid that stays whole. 0 leaves no way out.
A plate that drops into a rebate in the back and stops flush on the
ledge it leaves — a friction fit, so you can get it off again to change the strip. Stick the
LEDs to the inside of it; it prints that face down, which is the flat one. Off leaves the back
open.
The back of this box is a lid held in by friction, so tape or a screw
on the lid holds the lid — the case pulls off it and leaves the back on the wall.
Both mounts here are part of the case instead: a post that rises off the inside of the face,
comes up through a hole in the lid and finishes flush with the back, so the load goes into the
sign and the lid still lifts off to get at the strip. Tape pads are two strips
to stick foam tape to, top and bottom. Screw posts put a tube through each end
with the hole countersunk into the face, so it goes up and comes down with the lid on —
at the cost of two screw heads showing, out in the plain border. Both need room between the
wall and the lettering, and say so if the margin is too tight.
A hanging tag has two faces: the name on the front and the way home on the
back. A slide-on tag is a flat plate with a slot at each end; the strap goes in one slot,
behind the plate and out of the other. Nothing dangles, so it cannot jingle, snag or fall
off when a ring opens — but its back is against the dog, so everything is on the front.
Each shape starts at the width where a full phone number still comes out
at a readable 3.5 mm or more: a round, tag, shield or cat head from about 32 mm, a heart or
paw print from about 42, a bone at 45 and a fish at 50 — a bone's number only has the bar
between its lobes, a paw's only the pad, and a fish's the body in front of its tail. Picking a
shape puts this back to that shape's starting size; the readout warns when the number drops
under 3.5 mm.
The slots are the collar's width plus 1.5 mm long,
and this wide: the strap's thickness with room to go through at an angle. Measure the
collar; nylon webbing is about 2 mm, leather 3 to 4.
A round NFC sticker sealed in the middle of the tag, holding the phone
number: a phone held to the tag offers to call it. It prints in one go with one pause — the
printer stops once the pocket is finished, you drop the sticker in, and the rest prints over it,
so it is sealed against rain, baths and teeth, and nothing shows. The 3MF carries the pause, and
the readout says the height and exactly what to write to the chip (NFC Tools and the like:
add a phone number record, write, then lock it). Works with every layout — with
Name on both sides, the chip is where the number lives.
Optional, on the back beside the phone number: a page with
the owner's details that a finder opens with their camera. Use a short link you control, so it
can be re-pointed without reprinting the tag. A code needs room — at least 38 mm of
tag — and the readout says when it has been squeezed.
A 5 mm hole takes a split ring or a lobster clasp. Nothing at all
drops the tab and leaves the bare word.
5 mm takes the split ring or S-hook on most collars. The
plastic round it is heavier than a keyring's, because a tab that tears out is a lost tag.
On, the word sits proud of its own outline and the print takes one
filament change. Off, it is one flat solid in the body colour.
Colours from the shelf
Two materials in one print: each goes on its own
head, and the 3MF says which. TPU and PETG bond to each other, but not as well as
either bonds to itself — the letters are locked into pockets, so they hold anyway.
These are the spools in public/filaments.json — the
colours that can actually be printed. Each colour picks its own material and then its spool,
so a TPU tag can carry PETG lettering; Every colour in sets them all at once. The 3MF
puts each colour on its own filament, with the colour and material named, so the slicer opens
it ready to print. Edit the file when a spool arrives or runs out.
Every colour is an inlay in one thin face layer — the first 0.6 mm of each
half as it prints — so a multi-material printer does all its changes in three layers
and the rest of the part in the body colour. Primary is the name, phone and logo;
secondary the quieter lines and the tap wording.
The card's own colour, and one for each colour of the logo. A new logo
starts them on its own colours — and the card on the background it came on, or white
— each moved to the nearest spool on the shelf, so what you see is what can be printed.
Change any of them; the back's tap mark is in the first logo colour.
Body is the outline and Primary the letters on top of it. The other
two are not used by a keyring.
Body is the tag. Primary is the name on the front, Secondary the phone
number and QR code on the back, and Pattern the border. PETG for a hanging tag — stiff,
and it does not soften in a hot car the way PLA does. TPU for a slide-on: it bends with the
collar and cannot shatter, but it is soft enough to chew, so keep it off a hanging tag on a
dog that chews. Pick colours with contrast: the number has to read at arm's length.
Body is the plate. A stencil prints in one colour — the
other three are not used.
Body is the case and the lid, in something opaque. Primary is the
lettering and the diffuser behind it, and it wants a translucent or a white filament
— they are one piece, and they are the only thing the light comes through. The other two
are not used.
Stands each colour of the logo at its own height off the card, so the logo
is stepped like a badge — lettering above the field it sits on, the field above the card.
0 is flush. The biggest colour starts lowest and the finer ones higher; set them however the
logo reads best. Only the front steps: the back prints on the bed and stays flush.
Flush is the default and the one to sell: the lettering is inlaid 0.6 mm
into the tag, so there is nothing standing up to wear off against a collar. Raised is for the
look, and only the front can be raised — the back prints face down.
Flush is a smooth card with the logo inlaid level with it. Raised stands
the logo off the face — you can feel it — at the cost of a colour change on every
layer of the relief.
How far the lettering stands off the face. Flush is a smooth fob with every
colour in the face layer. 1.2 mm you can feel with a thumb, at the cost of a colour change
on every layer of the relief.