Parametric Baby Name Plate

Description

Bring a touch of personality and style to your baby’s stroller with this customizable name plate — inspired by classic license plates, but designed especially for little ones!

This isn’t just another stroller accessory — it’s a keepsake. Each plate is fully unique, making it perfect for families who value both creativity and sentimentality.

In most families, the stroller and its accessories are temporary, but this one will grow in value over time. Even after you sell or retire the stroller and all its gadgets, the plate can remain as a beautiful keepsake or door nameplate for your child’s room.

Key Features

• Minimal Waste: Lightweight and efficient to print — low material and time cost.
• Easy Print: Trivial design that requires no supports, with well separated colors for those without AMS.
• Two-Tone Color Scheme: Configurable foreground and background colors.
• Parametric Design: Configurable height and thickness.
• Personalized Text: Configurable text a three positions, with a huge variety of fonts, while maintaining design consistency.
• Sentimental Value: Let your kids design their own name plates, so you have something nice to remember to, when they hit puberty and won't listen to you anymore.

Parameters

• SIZE_MM: The height of the plate in millimeters. This is the single most important driver of the final dimensions. The font heights and spacing will all derive from this, to achieve an aesthetic and consistent look.
  I set 50mm as the default value, because it results in a nice, palm sized plate for most names, where the smaller texts are well readable even with a 0.4mm nozzle, and the most basic settings.
• PLATE_THICKNESS_MM: The thickness of the plate in millimeters. There is a direct correlation between the thickness and the strength of the print (as well as material cost, and print time).
  I set 2mm as the default value, because it feels strong enough for the expected use cases, even with PLA, and keeps the print time manageable. Feel free to experiment.
• DESIGN_THICKNESS_MM: The thickness of the design (print on the plate) in millimeters. I’ve read that to have a good, strong color, I should have 3-5 layers of my design, but after printing, I’m not so sure about that… Even after 1-2 layers, my test print looked nice. Maybe it is different with different color combinations, but for my white+red combo, it looked nice. Also, I noticed that if the design thickness is too large, (even 1mm), it affects how readable the small texts are from angles other than 90 degrees.
  I set 0.5mm as the default value, because it feels like a good middle ground, providing a nice touch of extruded design, but still not too tall, therefore well readable from multiple angles.
• FONT: The font of the texts on the plate. Here you can get really creative. I have extracted all the 1000+ fonts and 7000+ styles that the makerlab tool offers, but I’m not yet sure how to visualize them effectively. If there is a need for samples of the available fonts, let me know in the comments, and I’ll make a reference chart.
  I set “Arial:Bold” as the default value, as Arial is one of the simplest and cleanest looking fonts, and bold letters often look better on the plates. You are highly encouraged to change it though, as there is a huge variety of fun fonts.
• BIRTH_DATE: The birth date of your baby. This text will have the height that is 10% of your SIZE_MM, and will appear on the top of the plate.
  I set “2025” as the default value, but feel free to customize it whatever way you want. A reasonable alternative would be to print the whole date as “2025-01-01” or similar. The program does not really care if this is a date or not. If you want to write something else on the top of the plate, feel free to.
• FIRST_NAME: The first name of your baby. This text will have the height that is 40% of your SIZE_MM, and will appear at the very center of the plate.
  I set “JENNY” as the default value, but obviously, you should change it as appropriate (unless your baby is indeed Jenny). I recommend using all capital letters for aesthetic reasons, but play with it and see what works for you. The program does not really care if this is a first name or not. If you want to write something else at the center of the plate, feel free to.
• LAST_NAME: The last name of your baby. This text will have the height that is 10% of your SIZE_MM, and will appear on the bottom of the plate.
  I set “DOE” as the default value, again, change it as necessary. The program does not really care if this is a last name or not. If you want to write something else on the bottom of the plate, feel free to.
• BACKGROUND_COLOR: The color of the plate itself. Since BIRTH_DATE and LAST_NAME (top and bottom texts) are basically hollow elements of the border, they will also take this color.
  I set “white” as the default value, since most license plates are white, but you can get creative here.
• FOREGROUND_COLOR: The color of the design printed on the plate. It includes the borders around the plate, around the mount holes, and the center text as well.
  I set “red” as the default value, since… it looked good, I guess? Feel free to change it.
• DESCENT_CORRECTION: I spent an awful lot of time trying to properly center the texts, and it is more tricky, than it seems. In the end I realized that in most cases the default center alignment is sufficient. My efforts were not in vain however, in some cases, where the font supports ‘descent’ of letters (parts of a letter, like the tail of a J can go below the base line of the text), the automatic centering looks way off center. If you happen to pick a font like that, you can enable this correction, to bring the text back down to the real center.
  I set “false” as the default value, as with most fonts this is not an issue.

Note from the maker

Hi everyone! I’m all new to 3D printing. 
I learned a lot about printers, filaments, design and openscad in the past one week, but I’m still pretty much a beginner. 
I’m thrilled to be able to join a 3D modeling contest, and what I lack in experience I try to make up in enthusiasm and attention to detail.
I just got my first 3D printer a week ago, and I have no baby and no baby stroller :D If you have any improvement ideas on the design, on the print settings, or on anything else, please share.
I’m more than happy to learn!