Stamp maker — an image in, a mirrored printable stamp out
A stamp has to be back-to-front, and forgetting that is how most homemade stamps end up in the bin. This page opens with mirroring already on: your artwork is traced, flipped and raised 2.5 mm above a 5 mm block, so what you press onto paper reads the right way round.
Model
Traces the outline of a logo, icon or text and extrudes it — crisp edges, small files.
Tracing
Nothing showing? Drag Threshold — it decides which pixels count as solid — or switch Invert.
Base & mounting
Tips
- Logos and icons trace best from high-contrast black-on-white artwork — drag Threshold until the preview matches the shape you want.
- Photos belong in Relief mode; tracing a photo produces confetti, not a model.
- Keychains: keep the artwork at least 1.5 mm thick and the tag 2–3 mm so the ring hole doesn’t tear.
- Stamps must be mirrored — the preset does it — and print best with the relief 2–3 mm proud of the base.
- Print flat on the bed; a raised logo on a plate needs no supports.
Capabilities
What the stamp maker sets up for you
- Mirroring is on before you drop anything — the preview shows the stamp as it will be printed, and the impression comes out readable.
- The artwork stands 2.5 mm clear of the block, far enough that the block itself never kisses the ink pad or the paper around your mark.
- A 5 mm base gives a block you can actually push on: thinner plates bow in the middle and print a mark that is dark at the edges and pale in the centre.
- The speck filter is turned up, because a stray traced island the size of a comma prints as a blot in every impression you ever make.
- The threshold slider decides how much ink coverage you get — drag it to fatten or thin the strokes and watch the traced outline change live.
- An SVG of the same mirrored outline exports alongside the STL, if you would rather laser-cut the face out of rubber than print it.
Process
How it works
- Bring flat, bold artworkA signature scan, a monogram, a bold logo. Do not pre-mirror it — the tool does that. Anything with grey shading needs to become solid black first.
- Tune coverage, then reliefThreshold controls how thick the inked strokes are; keep the relief between 2 and 3 mm so ink reaches the artwork and nothing else.
- Print the face upwardSlice at 0.1 mm or finer with the stamp face up, no supports. The finer the layers, the sharper the edge of every line you print.
Mirroring
Why a stamp must be reversed — and what that means for text
Printing transfers the face onto paper as its mirror image, so the physical stamp has to carry the mirror of what you want to read. The tool applies that flip for you the moment the page loads, which has one consequence worth remembering: feed it artwork the right way round, exactly as it should appear on paper. If you mirror the image yourself in an editor before dropping it here, the two flips cancel and you get a stamp that prints backwards. Check the preview: on a stamp, the text on the model should look wrong. If it looks right on screen, something has been flipped twice — clear the Mirror checkbox or un-mirror the source, not both.
Impressions
Getting a clean impression from a printed stamp
Three things decide whether a printed stamp inks cleanly. Line width comes first: a stroke narrower than about 0.8 mm at final size is thinner than two perimeters of a 0.4 mm nozzle, so it prints ragged and holds no ink — thicken the artwork or make the stamp bigger. Second, layer lines on the face act like tiny gutters that ink runs into; 0.1 mm layers, or a smooth sheet under a face-down print, both fix it. Third, rigid PLA is not rubber: it wets poorly with water-based ink. Dab the pad onto the stamp rather than pressing the stamp into the pad, use pigment or archival ink, and press on a sheet of paper laid over a magazine so the surface gives slightly. For a genuinely soft face, print the same file in TPU at 95A.
Notes
Good to know
- No handle is generated. The block is a flat slab — glue it to a wood offcut, a bottle cap or a printed knob if you want something comfortable to grip.
- Silhouette tracing gives one flat relief height, so grey washes and photographic tone cannot become a stamp; convert the art to pure black and white first.
- Very fine serifs, hairline scripts and halftone dots survive on screen but not on paper — scale the stamp up until every stroke is at least 0.8 mm wide.
- The relief is a straight extrusion with vertical walls; commercial stamps taper their shoulders, which is kinder to the paper but is not modelled here.
FAQ
Questions, answered
Do I need to mirror my image before uploading it?
No — bring it the way you want it to appear on paper. Mirroring is applied automatically on this page, and doing it twice produces a backwards stamp.
How deep should the relief on a stamp be?
Between 2 and 3 mm above the block. That is enough that the block never touches the paper when you press, and shallow enough that the raised lines stay stiff instead of splaying under pressure.
What is the best material for a 3D printed stamp?
PLA prints the sharpest edges and works with a dabbed-on pigment ink. TPU at around 95A shore behaves much more like a real rubber stamp — softer contact, better coverage on textured paper — at the cost of some crispness.
Can I make a signature stamp?
Yes. Scan or photograph the signature on white paper, raise the threshold until the strokes are solid in the preview, and check that no part of the line is thinner than 0.8 mm at the size you plan to print.
Why is my impression patchy?
Either the ink is beading on the plastic — dab the pad on rather than pressing in, and switch to pigment ink — or the face is not flat, which happens when a thin block bows. Keep the base at 5 mm and print on a level bed.
Does my artwork get uploaded?
It stays in the browser. That matters more here than elsewhere: a signature is not something to hand to a web service, and this tool has no server to hand it to.
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