🧩 Pixelfinity: Turning Gridfinity into Pixel Art (and Vibe Coding My Way Through It)

Pixelfinity started as one of those happy accidents — the kind where you mess up a setting and suddenly unlock a whole new creative rabbit hole. I was messing around with the Gridfinity generator to make some 1×1 tool bins, accidentally set the height to zero, and got a paper-thin tile. Useless for storage… but kinda perfect for pixel art?

And just like that, I was off the rails.

It’s now a full-blown hybrid project: 3D printed pixel tiles that snap onto a magnetic grid, backed by a custom app I built to plan designs and track filament usage. I’ve been vibing my way through it ever since — printing, coding, cursing at magnets, and dreaming up ways to make it cooler.



🛠️ Building the Physical Grid: From Tool Storage to Wall Art

Pixel Art Cat
Pixel Cat from the Child Tests

So the physical side of Pixelfinity is built entirely on top of the Gridfinity system — which, if you’ve never used it, is basically LEGO for tool organization. I hijacked that whole system and turned it into a canvas.

The Setup:

  • 16×16 grid = 256 tiles total

  • Mounted on a spray-painted plywood board (~26.25in square)


  • Baseplates printed in 4×4 sections (Bambu Labs A1 Mini only has so much bed space)

  • Each pixel spot in the baseplate holds four 6mm x 2mm magnets = 64 magnets per plate = 1024 magnets for the 16×16 grid

  • Each tile uses two magnets

The Print Chaos:

  • Started with standard 1×1 prints

  • Found “connector” versions with holes and alignment points — much better

  • Discovered some were not press-fit… after printing a ton of them

  • Made a press-fitting tool to deal with the magnet madness

  • Glued 100+ magnets by hand with E6000 (the fumes were real)

  • Almost glued the magnets in backwards — twice

  • Nearly rage-quit and shou sugi ban’d the whole thing

[Insert Image: Magnet fitting tool]

Color Palette (a.k.a. Filament Graveyard):

  • Red, green, light green, black, white

  • Marble, space blue, light blue, grey, purple

  • Bonus: great excuse to use up scrap filament and half-empty spools

Once the magnets were in and the workflow was dialed in, the printer did most of the heavy lifting. I just snapped tiles, cursed at glue, and rearranged stuff endlessly.

The magnetic thunk when a tile locks in? Legitimately addictive.

 


🌐 The Pixelfinity Helper App – I Vibe-Coded This Thing Into Existence

The app side of this project came from a simple need: I wanted a fast way to sketch out pixel ideas before committing to a print. Nothing fancy. Just a grid and some colors. So naturally, I ended up building a whole system.

https://pixelfinity.borked.tools/

[Insert Screenshot: Pixelfinity Helper interface]


What It Does (So Far):

  • Custom grid sizes (16×16 default, but can go bigger)

  • Color palette system with names, filament brands, and types

  • Click-to-draw interface for placing tiles

  • Sidebar shows how many of each tile you’ve used

  • Exports PNGs (512×512) with name-based filenames

  • Imports from chatgpt
  • Trash Mode: delete palette colors instantly (no pop-ups, no regrets)

It’s very much a “built-for-me” app, but it works surprisingly well for planning out prints.

Under the Hood:

  • Built with Vite + React + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS

  • Originally ran it locally with a firewall hole (super secure, 10/10 don’t recommend)

  • Moved it to a VM on my Proxmox cluster

  • Running Ubuntu, managed via tmux, coded with VS Code Server

  • Pointed a dev subdomain to it and finally locked it down


🚧 Still Janky, Still in Progress

Like most things I build, the Pixelfinity Helper is held together with duct tape and vibes. But it gets the job done. Here’s what’s still on the wish list:

  • Mobile and tablet support

  • Touch drawing mode

  • AI-powered pixel art generation

    • (Right now I just paste in output from ChatGPT)

  • Upload a photo of your real-world board and convert it into app format

  • CORS-safe backend API for future AI tools


💭 Future Experiments and Wild Ideas

This is the part where I start dreaming up stuff I’ll probably get distracted from halfway through — but maybe not:

  • Add a Raspberry Pi Zero with an e-ink display to show the current design or a QR code

  • Design a modular frame that connects through Gridfinity holes

  • Make more pixel designs (already made a Pokéball!)

  • Scale it up to a full mural — eventually

  • Expand my filament stash to go full chaos mode

  • Maybe release the STLs publicly if anyone else wants to try it


🙌 Just for Fun — But Could Be More

I made Pixelfinity for the hell of it. It was never meant to be anything more than a fun side project. But honestly? I’d be stoked if someone else printed a few tiles, stuck them on a wall, and made something weird and cool.

The system’s super modular, chunky in a satisfying way, and surprisingly expressive for something so simple. It blends pixel art with physical tinkering in a way that scratches every creative itch I have — from CAD to code to color matching.

For now, I’m just gonna keep printing dumb little designs and watching magnets snap into place.

Share this Post:
Scroll to Top