Locking Tiles (IRL Pixel Art)

I designed a pretty simple way to lock tiles together.
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updated January 30, 2023

Description

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I designed a pretty simple way to lock tiles together. I saw quite a few other locking tile designs on here but they all were a single piece, which I wasn't a huge fan of because then the outside tiles have the joining piece hanging off the edge and don't form an edge that looks flat when viewed from the front. I also didn't see any that were small enough for what I wanted to do (the pixel art pictured above).

Each tile is 15mm x 15mm x 6mm, and the joints snap into the back at just a little bit more loose than a "friction fit." They'd probably work pretty well scaled up, but I'm not sure how tight the fit would be.

If you'd like to check out other things I've made, I recently (early June 2021) started a Twitter account where I share projects I've done. https://twitter.com/makingorwtvr

Printing:

IIRC for the tiles I used 0.2mm layer height and 15% gyroid infill, and they came out to be almost exactly 1 gram of filament each. I used the same settings for the joints.

The tiles were printed face down without supports, but they could also be printed face up with supports, depending on whether you want your print surface's texture/finish on the face or not.

I printed the tiles in batches of 10-50 depending on how many of each color I needed, and the joints in batches of 50-100. With how I split it up, the print time for the pictured shiny Mew sprite was a little over 110 hours, and the assembly took ~7 hours.

If you don't want the tiles to have any play once they're assembled, I'd recommend sealing the whole thing with some type of epoxy. I used XTC-3D on the front and back and it holds together very well. On smaller projects you may be able to just use superglue on each connection as you assemble it.

Print Settings

Printer Brand:

Prusa

Printer:

I3 MK3S

Rafts:

No

Supports:

No

Filament: Prusament PLA

Notes:

Colors used:
Prusament Azure Blue

Prusament Royal Blue

Prusament Jet Black

Hatchbox White

Category: Art

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The author marked this model as their own original creation. Imported from Thingiverse.

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