Brick-style advent calendar maker
Print 24 little brick-style boxes, each with a big raised day number on the front and studs on its lid. Fill them with sweets or tiny builds, and the boxes are the calendar. Pick a size and colours, see how many print plates and how much plastic it takes, then print. It all happens in your browser.
Trying it is free. Downloading needs a free account (just your email); Pro owners are not asked.
Print plates
Print one test box first
The lid is a press fit: its skirt slides over the top 5 mm of the box with 0.2 mm of air each side. Every printer prints a little differently, so print the free day 1 box and lid on their own before the whole set.
- Too tight: sand the lip at the top of the box lightly, or lower the flow a few percent.
- Too loose: raise the flow a few percent, or print the lids in PETG, which grips a little more.
- The studs are real brick size (4.8 mm across, 8 mm apart), so a brick or plate can sit on a lid. How firmly it grips depends on your printer; we have not tested it.
Printing it
- Boxes print open side up, lids print studs up. No supports. The lid's roof bridges the inside; any sag underneath is hidden in the box.
- PLA is fine. Use 0.2 mm layers, 3 walls and 15% infill.
- Numbers in a second colour need a multi-colour printer (an AMS): in the Pro files each plate's 3MF has the numbers and names as their own part on filament 2. With one nozzle, print them in the box colour: they stand 1 mm proud, and a paint pen fills them in quickly.
- With one nozzle you can still colour the lids: with Two colours the lids get plates of their own, and a filament change at 6.2 mm on those plates prints the studs and names in the second colour.
- A colour per row puts each row of 6 on its own plates, so every plate prints in one colour.
Ready by 1 December
A full set is a lot of printing: the page shows the hours for your choices, and the Mini set is about 290 g, roughly 12 to 29 hours of printer time. Print a plate an evening and it is done in a few days. Leave time to print the test box first, and to fill and wrap the boxes.
The grams come from the shape of the parts and the way a slicer prints walls and infill. The hours are a range (10 to 25 g an hour) because nozzle, speed and settings vary. Your slicer gives the exact numbers. Nothing here has been printed and timed by us yet.