A NUGGS-compatible hamster-tunnel module that is made of its resident's name: a standard 80 mm-bore straight whose midspan wears a structural letter cage spelling FRIEDA, Word-World style — the word wraps 289° around the tube between a base rail and a cap rail. It carries the same genderless quarter-turn port as every NUGGS module (same standard, same revision, same defaults), so it couples with any of them, either way round, and works as a drop-in replacement for the plain straight. Print it for the hamster whose bridge should say whose it is.
The name is a second wall, not the enclosure wall: inside the letter cage runs a full, continuous, standard NUGGS tube, so the bore is never narrowed (70 mm welfare floor), no opening between glyphs is reachable from inside, and every letter edge stays outside the enclosure. A stencil tube — letters as the bore wall itself — was considered and refused; the reasoning is in NOTES.md.
What you get
bridge— the name bridge (Ø 104.8 mm over the letters, 180 mm end to end including both port projections; 160 mm face to face)coupon— two bore-clean port stubs (≈ Ø 97 × 35 mm each) to tuneport_tolbefore committing to the full print. Print this first.
Print settings
- Material: PETG preferred (hand-wash-only rule of the NUGGS system); PLA works
- Layer height: 0.2 mm, 0.4 mm nozzle
- Infill: any — the part is almost all 2.4 mm walls
- Supports: none needed. Both cage skirts are 50° cones; letter internals print as short anchored bridges
- Orientation: upright, exactly as rendered — bore axis vertical, standing on one port's sector tips
- Brim: recommended (180 mm tall part on three small sector tips)
Parameters
| Parameter | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
name | "FRIEDA" | The word. Capitals A–Z only (every glyph must anchor rail to rail; the file explains) |
letter_size | 80 | Font size in mm; cap height ≈ 0.69 × this |
letter_kern | [8,0,0,8,0] | Per-gap weld: mm removed after each glyph so free arm ends (F, E) fuse into the next stem instead of printing as cantilevers |
port_tol | 0.30 mm | The one fit knob of the whole port standard. Tune on the coupon in ±0.05 steps |
straight_len | 160 mm | Face-to-face tube length. 160 = drop-in for the nuggs straight |
bore_d | 80 mm | Internal bore. Asserted ≥ 70 mm (welfare floor) by the library — never lower that floor |
All parameters are at the top of nuggs-frieda.scad, grouped in Customizer
sections; override on the command line with -D 'letter_size=70'. Change a
[The NUGGS standard] parameter and nothing you already printed fits.
Assembly & use
Couples like every NUGGS module: push the port faces together at the insertion clocking, twist ~14° either way, done — and one twist opens it again. The engraved rules on the tube are load-bearing, not decoration: MAX RUN 360MM / COUPLINGS DONT RESET — modules twisted together are one continuously enclosed run, so don't chain name bridges past the limit for a 180 mm animal (two of these coupled measure 340 mm of enclosed bore: legal, and the ceiling). Grip the letter cage to twist; it clears a mating module's coupling ring by design. Hand wash only, ≤ 50 °C; water that gets between the tube and the cage drains back out through the letter openings.
Want a different name? Set name (capitals only) and review the kern: any
letter with free-ended arms (E, F, L, T) wants a weld into its right-hand
neighbour — see F3 in NOTES.md.