MakerChips — the Business Card Nobody Throws Away

A paper business card goes into the bin on the way out of the hall. A printed token 40 mm across stays: on a shelf, on a magnet, in the hands of a friend you show it to. That is a MakerChip — your logo, your nickname, and a QR code on a disc of plastic you made yourself. Print it, bring it to RepRapUA Fest #4, and trade.

The format was invented by the maker Kevin (K2_Kevin) in 2024, who published the templates openly from the start. Since then chips have become the currency of introductions: at the Rocky Mountain RepRap Festival, the Japan RepRap Festival, and dozens of smaller events people trade them instead of shuffling around trying to remember each other names.

The first rule of the club: it is a chip, not a coin. It is worth nothing and it buys nothing. Now try taking someone collection away from them.

Only the dimensions are mandatory. Everything else is your territory.

• Diameter: 40 mm. Exactly 40, because holders, boxes, and display walls are built around that size.
• Thickness: 3 mm, 3.5 mm at most.
• Relief height of the logo and the QR code: 0.6 to 0.8 mm.
• QR code: about 26 mm across.

Colors, the number of materials, texture, moving parts, an NFC tag inside — that part is your own creativity. That is exactly why chips are worth collecting.

The dimensions are the only frame. After that it becomes a sport: make a chip people are reluctant to give away.

• A transparent top. A layer of clear PLA over a colored one creates a cast resin effect: a flat chip suddenly has depth.
• Moving parts. Print in place — a gimbal, gears, a spinner. People pick such a chip up and cannot put it down.
• Glow in the dark or a color that shifts with the warmth of a hand: the filament does half of the work for you.
• A lithophane. Your photo appears when the chip is lifted towards the light.
• NFC inside. A phone touches it and your site opens. The cheapest magic at the festival.

The record, as always, holds exactly until the next festival.

The fastest route is to take a ready template and replace the artwork in it. The first chip takes an evening, the second one takes half an hour.

1. Download the K2_Kevin project (links at the bottom of this page): it contains the chip base and more than twenty artwork variants.
2. Open the prepared 3MF project itself rather than dragging an STL into an empty one. The project already carries the layer heights and flow settings without which fine relief simply does not slice.
3. In the object list, right click the decoration → Replace with STL → your logo.
4. Select the base and the decoration, right click → Merge / Combine, so that they become a single object.
5. Slice and inspect both faces in the preview: that is where you see whether the relief has sunk.

If you want something entirely your own, model a 40 by 3 mm cylinder in Fusion, Tinkercad, or OpenSCAD. Export the logo, the QR code, and the background as separate bodies: it makes assigning colors in the slicer much easier.

• Prepare it as SVG or STL, with a relief height of 0.6 to 0.8 mm.
• Print it face down: the layer pressed against the plate gives the sharpest edges and the finest detail.
• A smooth plate (PEI, PEO) gives gloss and crispness, a textured one gives a matte surface.
• If the logo contains text, remember to mirror it for a face down print.

• Put the QR code on the top face. On the bottom the first layer squishes out, the modules merge, and phones often fail to read it.
• Shorten the address. Use makerhub.org instead of https://www.makerhub.org/: fewer modules, each one larger and more reliable in print.
• Write the address in CAPITALS. That switches the encoder into alphanumeric mode and drops the code by a whole version: REPRAPUA.MAKERHUB.ORG becomes 21 by 21 modules instead of 25 by 25, which means 1.24 mm per module instead of 1.04. Domains are case insensitive, so the link works exactly the same.
• Check that it is not a Micro QR. On short payloads many generators quietly produce a micro version (M1 to M4), and phone cameras mostly cannot see those at all. You need a normal QR code, version 1 or 2.
• About 26 mm across, 0.6 to 0.8 mm of relief.
• Contrast matters more than detail: two colors (a light background with dark modules) read far better than a single color relief.
• Always test the scan with a phone on the printed chip, not in the slicer preview.

A chip can also open a link on touch. To do that, model a negative cavity of about 25 by 1 mm and add a pause around the tenth layer: the printer stops, you drop in the NFC tag, and printing continues, bridging over it. Use tags with an adhesive backing, otherwise the part cooling fan will move the tag as soon as the printer resumes.

• Select the textured plate in the slicer even when you print on a smooth one: the first layer is pressed harder and the relief comes out sharper.
• Ironing levels the top face. Without it the extrusion lines are visible.
• Transparent PLA or PETG over a colored layer creates a cast resin effect: a depth that ordinary printing does not give.
• If an object disappears after merging, reorder the objects in the list and slice again.
• Painting with the brush over merged objects often produces strange results. Separate bodies with per body colors work better.

A chip weighs 7 to 10 grams, and about two dozen of them fit on a 256 by 256 mm plate per run. Fifty is a sensible minimum, a hundred is a peaceful night. Trading happens one for one rather than as a handout to everyone, yet chips have a cursed habit of running out exactly when the person you have wanted to meet for years walks up. Keep a few for yourself as well: your own chip belongs in your own collection.

This is not a souvenir handout, it is a hunt. In one day you can gather a collection that shows the whole festival: who can do what, and who is proud of it.

• The trading table — come with your chips and swap them. The rate is always one for one and haggling is out of place.
• Marked booths — exhibitors who hand out their own chips will be marked, so you do not have to ask every one of them.
• The chip wall — a shared display: everything brought to the festival in a single frame. There should be no empty cells by the end of the day.

Collecting is not an end in itself here: the main prize for a completed collection is a 3D printer, along with several smaller prizes. How many chips make a set, and by what hour the collection has to be handed in, will be announced closer to the festival. Print your own chips now: trading works both ways, and empty hands do not build a set.

The K2_Kevin templates are published under CC BY-NC-SA: you may use and remix them with attribution, but not for commercial purposes. The standard itself (40 mm by 3 mm) belongs to nobody, so if your chip is corporate or promotional, model your own geometry and the question disappears.

• The original MakerChip on MakerWorld — templates, tuned print profiles, examples.
• The same chip on Printables.
• The MakerChip page of the Japan RepRap Festival — how they run it.
• A QR generator producing SVG and DXF by JRRF, suitable for printing and for laser cutting.
• makerchip.app — the worldwide chip catalog.

Made your own chip? Show it to us and we will build a gallery of Ukrainian MakerChips right here. Being the first to show off is a pleasure of its own.