📖 the 3D PIXELATOR — complete guide

01What this thing is🔊

The 3D Pixelator is a voxel forge: you build models out of little cubes — 3D pixels — and it turns them into files your printer understands, pre-tuned for PLA filament. It is one HTML file that runs in your browser: no installs, no accounts, and no internet needed except for the optional AI mode and the online model search.

The golden workflow never changes, and every tab exists to serve one step of it:

1. MAKE a model — type words, tap the catalog, search the internet, sculpt by hand, or import a photo or scan.
2. CHECK it will print — ANALYZE flags impossible geometry; the SIM tab prints it 50 times virtually.
3. EXPORT — a watertight STL (or colour 3MF) plus a one-click slicer profile.
4. SLICE & PRINT — Creality Print, Orca, Cura or PrusaSlicer take it from there.

Why voxels? Cubes have flat bottoms, vertical walls and no curves — exactly what a filament printer extrudes best. A voxel model that passes the two checks in step 2 is close to un-failable.

02Controls — PC and iPhone🔊

The big dark area is your build plate; the grid floor is layer zero, exactly like the printer's bed.

On the phone the side panels live off-screen: 🧰 (top-left) slides in the tools, ⚙️ (top-right) slides in the print panels with all the tabs. Tap the shaded area, or pick a tool, and they glide away.

Install it like an app

On iPhone: open the page in Safari → Share → Add to Home Screen. It launches full-screen with its own icon. Your work autosaves per-browser every couple of seconds; 💾 SAVE exports a .json you can move between phone and PC.

03Your first print in ten minutes🔊

The fastest possible win, start to finish:

1. Open the app → MAKE tab → type text: ANGEL → BUILD IT. Real 3D letters appear on a base plate.
2. PLA tab → pick your printer preset → confirm voxel size 2 mm → the model reads about 70 mm wide and fits the bed.
3. Tap ANALYZE — a nameplate has no overhangs, so it comes back clean.
4. SIM tab → RUN SIMULATED PRINTS → expect green: wide flat base, low height.
5. EXPORT tab → PIXELATOR-profile.ini first, then model.stl.
6. In Creality Print: File ▸ Import ▸ Import Configs… → pick the .ini → the three PIXELATOR profiles appear. Drag the STL in, choose those profiles, slice, print.
7. Watch the first layer stick. That's the whole game — if layer one is good, the print is good.

04MAKE — the 370-object catalog🔊

Type what you want and BUILD IT builds it. Behind the box sit two engines. The one that never needs internet is a template catalog: six parametric solid-template families — quadrupeds, birds, sea life, people, vehicles, buildings — plus primitive-stack entries for food, furniture, tools and icons. About 370 named objects answer to their names, and every one lands solid, bed-supported and printable.

Tap 📚 browse all to see every word the parser knows, with a filter box. Tap any chip and it builds.

Modifiers stack

• Colours — any palette word: red dragon, gold crown.
• Sizes — tiny · small · big · huge · giant.
• Shapes — tall, wide, long, fat, thin.
• Cuteness — baby / chibi shrinks the body and grows the head.
• hollow — carves the interior after building.

So baby blue elephant, fat gold pig, and tall red lighthouse are all real prompts — multiplied out, the catalog answers roughly 760,000 distinct prompts. The 🎲 button rerolls the random proportions on the same prompt; keep rolling until you love one.

★ Your own catalog

Whatever is on the plate right now — typed, sculpted, imported from a scan or from the internet — name it in the box and hit ★ save. From then on typing that name rebuilds it instantly, forever, and it shows first in the browser with a ★. This is how your preset list grows past what ships in the box.

053D text & nameplates🔊

Type text: followed by up to ten letters, numbers, or - ! ? ♥ and the app extrudes a real 5×7 pixel font onto a base plate. Add a colour word to colour the letters: red text: MUM.

Nameplates print best flat on the bed exactly as built — the base grips, the letters rise, nothing overhangs. At 2 mm voxels a ten-letter plate is about 120 mm wide; drop voxel size to 1.5 mm if your bed is small. For two-colour plates: base and letters are different palette colours, so "one STL per colour" or the 3MF export splits them for a filament swap.

06🌐 Online search — eight sources, health-scored🔊

The online search asks multiple internet model libraries at once and merges what comes back — built like a multi-source RPC desk: every source has a live health dot (green responding, red failing, grey waiting for a key) and shows its last answer time in the 📡 sources panel.

⤓ import downloads the file and voxelizes it straight into your grid at the current resolution — then the ★ name box pre-fills so one more tap adds it to your catalog. That's the loop: search the internet → import → ★ save → it's yours by name forever.

Keys go in the 📡 panel and stay in your browser. Get them free from each site's developer page; the moment a key is saved that source's dot arms and joins every search.

07AI boost — Claude designs anything🔊

The catalog knows 370 things; Claude knows everything else. Flip on AI boost, paste an Anthropic API key once (console.anthropic.com → API keys — it stays in your browser, deletable with ✕), and BUILD IT sends free-form prompts to Claude, which designs the model as a stack of solid primitives that rasterize into your grid.

Claude is told the printing rules — everything bed-supported, no floating parts, 45° limit — but treat it as a talented apprentice: always ANALYZE + SIM an AI model before printing. If the call fails or is declined, the offline catalog answers instead, so BUILD IT never dead-ends.

08Sculpting by hand🔊

Six tools, all undoable: PLACE grows a cube on the face you tap. ERASE removes. PAINT recolours without changing shape. FILL flood-recolours a connected same-colour region — the 3D paint bucket. BOX takes two taps, corner to corner, and fills the block between — the fastest way to rough out bodies and bases. PICK is the eyedropper.

Force multipliers

• Mirror X / Z — every edit duplicates across the centre line. Build half, get whole.
• LAYER slider — slices the view like a slicer preview, so you can edit inside a model.
• HOLLOW — empties the interior leaving a wall N voxels thick. Slicers already print sparse infill, so hollow mainly matters for true shells (lamps, containers) — keep walls ≥ 2 voxels.
• FLOOR — drops the model to the bed. Everything must reach layer zero to print.

A good hybrid workflow: build a catalog object close to what you want, then sculpt the details on top, then ★ save the result under your own name.

09IMPORT — photos, lithophanes & scans🔊

Any image becomes a model three ways. FLAT extrudes every pixel the same height — logos, cookie-cutters, keychains. HEIGHTMAP raises brighter pixels higher — terrain and relief art. LITHOPHANE inverts it: thin where bright, thick where dark, so backlight reveals the photo.

Real 3D files: drop an .stl or .obj anywhere on the viewport (or use the IMPORT buttons) and it gets 3D-pixelated — surface shell plus solid interior fill — at your grid resolution. Higher grid = faithful, lower grid = chunky Minecraft charm. This is the Creality Scan pipeline: scan an object → export STL → drop it here → pixelate → paint → ★ save → print your voxel remix of a real thing.

10Scale — voxel ↔ nozzle ↔ layers🔊

Three numbers must agree, and the PLA tab checks all three live:

1. Voxel size ≥ nozzle diameter — a 0.4 mm nozzle physically cannot draw a 0.3 mm cube. At ≥ 2× nozzle (0.8 mm+) every voxel gets two solid perimeter walls. 2 mm voxels print crisp chunky pixel-art.
2. Voxel size = whole number of layers — 2.0 mm ÷ 0.2 mm = 10 layers exactly ✓. The checker warns when the division isn't clean, because half-layers blur the voxel steps.
3. Model fits the bed — dimensions update live in millimetres against your printer preset.

Get these right and the print looks exactly like the screen.

11The quick PLA panel🔊

The essentials, with sane defaults: nozzle 200 °C (190–220 band — hotter welds layers stronger, cooler keeps detail crisp), bed 60 °C, fan 100% after layer one. Shrinkage: PLA contracts ~0.3% cooling, so exports are pre-scaled up by exactly that — printed parts measure true. The estimate card converts your model's volume into grams, metres of filament, dollars and rough hours before you commit.

Every spool is slightly different. When a print looks almost-right, the answer is usually ±5 °C or a fan tweak — not a redesign.

12The 40-setting PRO DESK🔊

Open PRO DESK under the quick panel and you have the whole slicer: nine groups, forty settings, and — the important part — an ⓘ dot on every single one that tells you what it does, why it matters, and what number to use. It is a slicing course disguised as a control panel. The groups:

• MACHINE — bed size, nozzle Ø, filament Ø. Get these right once and every check downstream is trustworthy.
• QUALITY — layer height, first layer, wall loops, top/bottom layers, infill % and pattern. Remember: strength comes from walls, not infill — +1 wall beats +20% infill.
• TEMPERATURE — body and first-layer temps for nozzle and bed. First layer 5–10 °C hotter buys adhesion for free. PLA wants no heated chamber.
• SPEED — print / first-layer / outer-wall / travel / acceleration. Voxel models are all corners, so acceleration decides real print time more than top speed.
• COOLING — fan %, fan-off first layers, minimum layer time. Pointy voxel towers need the min-layer-time or the tip melts to mush.
• EXTRUSION — flow (calibrate with a single-wall cube and calipers), retraction, Z-hop. Z-hop 0.2 mm is cheap insurance against the nozzle knocking towers over.
• ADHESION & SUPPORT — skirt, brim, supports and their threshold/gap. Run ANALYZE before enabling supports; they scar voxel undersides.
• COMPENSATION — shrink, elephant-foot, hole compensation, fit clearance. Two printed parts that must slide together need ~0.2 mm air per side.
• MATERIAL & COST — density, spool price and weight; drives the estimates.

Nothing here needs retyping in the slicer — see section 16.

13Presets — one tap, whole desk🔊

Quality presets: draft (0.28 mm, 2 walls, fast — fail cheap on first attempts), standard (0.20 mm — the everyday answer), fine (0.12 mm, 7 top layers — show pieces). Machine presets fill bed size, speeds and acceleration for Ender-3, Creality K1, K1 Max, Prusa MK4 and Bambu A1. Presets and the quick panel stay in sync both ways — change either, the other follows, and the reset button restores every default.

14ANALYZE — the 45° rule🔊

A printer draws each layer on top of the previous one. It can lean about 45° outward, because each layer still mostly rests on the one below. A voxel with nothing beneath it — not even diagonally — is a 90° overhang: hot plastic drooping into spaghetti. A floating island (a chunk with no connection down to the bed) is worse: guaranteed failure.

ANALYZE finds both and flashes them red in the viewport for six seconds. Fixes, in order of preference: stair-step the overhang (diagonal contact counts as supported — that's the 45° rule in voxel form), add a sacrificial column you snap off, or enable supports in the pro desk and slicer.

15SIM — fifty prints before one🔊

The SIM tab runs your model through virtual print jobs, layer by layer, rolling against the real failure modes: weak first-layer grip, tall-skinny tipping, overhang droop, floating islands, thin-neck snapping, plus rare random events (layer shift, partial clog). You get a success bar, a ✓/✗ grid of every run — tap one for its failure layer and cause — an error breakdown, and a ranked fix list.

The tuning loop: run 50 → read the top killer → apply its one fix (brim, supports, or edit the model) → run again → repeat until green. That is exactly how real print tuning works, minus the wasted spools.

16EXPORT — files & the .ini profile🔊

Four model formats, one profile:

• model.stl — watertight binary STL, true millimetres, shrinkage pre-applied. The universal answer.
• one STL per colour — each colour as its own perfectly-aligned part; import together, assign filaments.
• model.3mf — the modern format: every colour stays a separate object in one file. Bambu, Orca and Creality Print map them straight to filament slots.
• model.obj + .mtl — colours preserved for 3D software.
• PIXELATOR-profile.ini — the whole pro desk as three linked slicer profiles (print / filament / printer).

Importing the profile

PrusaSlicer: File ▸ Import ▸ Import Config…. OrcaSlicer and Creality Print (which is Orca-based): File ▸ Import ▸ Import Configs…. The three PIXELATOR entries appear in the profile dropdowns — pick them and your slicer is set to exactly what the app simulated. No retyping forty numbers, ever.

17First-layer clinic & print day🔊

Ninety percent of failed prints die in the first layer. The ritual:

1. Clean bed — warm water + dish soap beats isopropyl for PLA on PEI. Fingerprint oil is the enemy.
2. Slow layer one — 20 mm/s, thick (0.28 mm), hot (+5–10 °C), fan off.
3. Watch the skirt — the loops drawn around the print show live whether the nozzle height is right: squished ribbon = good; round spaghetti = too high; scraped transparent = too low.
4. Stay for layer one, then leave. If it stuck, it will almost certainly finish.

New model? Slice a draft first — fail fast and cheap, then print fine. Tall skinny model? Brim on. Overhangs flagged? Supports on. The SIM tab already told you which.

18Troubleshooting table🔊

19Glossary🔊

voxel

one 3D pixel — a cube in the grid; the whole model is made of them.

STL

the universal 3D-print file: a mesh of triangles, no colour.

3MF

modern zip-based format; keeps colours, units and multiple objects in one file.

slicer

software (Creality Print, Orca, Cura, PrusaSlicer) that cuts a model into printer moves (G-code).

layer height

thickness of each printed slice; 0.2 mm standard, lower = finer + slower.

infill

the sparse lattice printed inside a model; 15% typical.

perimeter / wall

the outline lines forming the skin; walls carry the strength.

brim

a peel-off ring attached to layer one for grip.

skirt

loops around (not touching) the print to prime the nozzle.

supports

sacrificial scaffolding under overhangs; snaps off, scars the surface.

overhang

geometry leaning past ~45° with nothing below — needs stair-steps or supports.

island

a piece not connected down to the bed; will always fail without supports.

retraction

pulling filament back during travel so it doesn't ooze strings.

Z-hop

lifting the nozzle during travel so it can't hit the print.

elephant foot

squished-out bulge on the bottom edge; compensation shaves it.

lithophane

a photo encoded as thickness — backlight reveals the image.

watertight

a mesh with no holes — sliceable; this app's exports always are.

G-code

the printer's move-by-move instructions; the slicer writes it, you never do.

20Learning tools & the narrator🔊

Everything in this guide also lives inside the app: 🎓 TEACH makes every control explain itself when tapped (including all forty ⓘ dots on the pro desk), 🧭 TOUR walks the sixteen stops in order, and the LESSONS tab holds the written mini-courses. The narrator here and the voice in the app are the same saved choice — Australian by default (Karen on iPhone, Catherine on Windows); pick any voice in the dropdown above and both remember it.

Now go build something, check it, sim it, and print it. 🇦🇺

✓The print-ready quiz🔊