Cat Ear Mate Tag (OpenSCAD)

Contact: faye

Status:

Download via Thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6770496

German version: https://wiki.vspace.one/doku.php?id=projekte:2024:cat-ear-mate-tag

On this years GPN, which was my first big chaos/hacker event of all time, i saw a lot of Club-Mate bottles with the widespread Mate Tags and asked myself why i don't have one myself. As I got back into the space, it wasn't enough for me to put some values into a template. Coming up with the idea of decorating my Mate Tag with cat ears forced me to deal with the OpenSCAD language i didn't know a lot about at that point.

So anyways, after i posted the pictures of my brand-new innovation on the Fediverse after a sleepless night, i got a lot of reception and requests for a template and ever since almost half a year has passed.

But after endless procrastination and many adjustments the template is finally finished.

After you've installed OpenSCAD and downloaded the template you can open the cat_ear_mate_tag.scad file in the program.

As soon as you open the template in OpenSCAD, the functionality is pretty easy to understand. You can edit the many parameters I've built into this template in the Customizer panel. Many of them have a slider so you won't break the template with your values. The parameters and their effects are also explained there.

In the template, OCR-A is specified as a font. If it's not installed, OpenSCAD will use another default font.

• General:
  • $fn: Chnanges the polygons of the tag.
  • name: The name written on the tag.
  • font: The font for the name.
  • logo: The path of the used logo. Can be left empty
  • ears: Checkbox option for the Ears
• Tag:
  • bottle neck radius: Radius of the bottle neck, is the same for most glass bottles, in mm.
  • bottle angle: Changes the shape of the tag to adjust to different bottles, in degrees.
  • tag height: The height of the tag, may be reduced with no logo to save filament, in mm.
  • tag thickness: The thickness of the tag, it shouldn't break but still be flexible, in mm.
  • gap angle: The size of the gap to clip your bottle through. in degrees.
  • relief: Text and Logo can either be extruded with a positive value or incised with a negative value, each in mm.
• Text/Name:
  • text size: Font size for the name, in mm.
  • text space: Extra or with negative values less space between the letters, in mm.
  • text vertical move: Moves the text up, or down with negative values, in mm.
  • text horizontal move: Moves the text to the right, or left with negative values, in mm.
• Logo:
  • logo size: Size of the chosen logo, in mm.
  • logo vertical move: Move your logo up, or down with negative values, in mm.
  • logo horizontal move: Move your text to the right, or to the left with negative values, in mm.
  • logo spin: Spin the logo around itself, clockwise, in degrees.
• Ears:
  • ear size: Size of the ears, in mm, other values make it appear smaller.
  • ear thickness: Thickness of the ears, they don't have to be flexible, in mm.
  • ear move down: Move the ears down into the tag, 0 → on top of the clipping piece, in mm.
  • ear angle: The position of the ears, relative to the front, in degrees.
  • ear rounding: Rounding the upper edge of the ears, radius, in mm.
  • ear stretch: How far the ears should stretch, orientated at the bottom radius, in mm.

To use your own logo, you need to have it in a 50x50mm SVG or DXF File, since this is the only way the program can read it. The dimensions are important, because with them the logo is scaled onto the tag correctly.

You can scale the SVG File on 50x50mm by yourself in Inkscape for example. It is done by creating a new document and set 50mm each for height and width in the Document Properties… (Ctrl + Shift + D). After you've imported (Ctrl + I) the logo, you set it's height and width in Transform (Ctrl + Shift + M) under Scale to 50mm as well. If the logo isn't a square, check Scale proportionally and only set the higher value to 50mm. Eventually, you can center the logo on the horizontal and vertical axis in Align and Distribute (Ctrl + Shift + A).

After exporting (Ctrl + Shift + E) your logo to the project path, preferably to a subfolder, you can put the file path into the logo-Parameter in OpenSCAD.

Apart from this it, as long as you're familiar with vector graphics, it can also make sense to further edit the logo if it has too many details that are too small for the printer, like small texts for instance. Like with the vspace.one logo where I removed the texts completely, altered the rocket and made the border thicker, so that printing errors can be avoided.

Generally, any installed font can be used for your name on the tag.

To see which fonts can be used, you can find the Font List Window under Help at the top. The font styles for the respective fonts are listed there as well. To use a specific font style it has to be declared additionally in the font parameter. If you, for instance, would like to use the FreeSans Font in the Bold style, you would have to state FreeSans:style=Bold.

The cat_ear_mate_tag.json File declares some extra templates for different tags for different bottles. Those are read by OpenSCAD automatically if it's in the same directory and can be chosen in a drop down menu, as well as further adapted in the Customizer panel. So far, there are templates for 3 bottle shapes, each with a version without ears and logo.

When you're done in OpenSCAD, you can render (F6) the tag and export it as an STL (F7). With that the tag is ready to be sliced and printed.