The PrintPal Desk Pal Maker is a free browser tool that designs the printable head of a Desk Pal : a tiny desk pet with a pair of big animated robot eyes on a round 1.28″ touch screen. A Desk Pal is all head — no body, legs or feet — so it sits low on the desk with the face right in front of you. Pick a cute cat, dog, bear, cow, robot or mochi head, recolor it, or describe any creature and let the AI generate a full-color 3D head. Place the 38.5 mm ESP32-S3 screen puck on the head, watch the eyes blink and react, then download a two-part snap-fit shell as a multi-color 3MF or print-ready STLs. The display cavity, 1.5 mm bezel, USB-C channel, connector recess and locating ring are all cut in for you — no CAD needed.
Every head is cut for the Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.28 : a Φ38.5 mm puck with a 240×240 GC9A01 round display, capacitive touch, a QMI8658 IMU and a Li-ion charger. The tool keeps the screen opening at the real 32.4 mm viewing area behind a thin bezel.
Nine hand-built animal and robot heads with three recolorable zones, or generate a one-of-a-kind creature head from a text prompt as a full-color 3D model whose texture is reduced to 2–8 filament colors.
The head is split into a face shell that holds the puck and a back shell that presses onto its keyed locating ring and snap nubs (it only fits one way round). The face shell prints bezel-down with the cavity open upward, the back shell on its flat split face — no supports needed for most shapes.
The same eye renderer that runs on the device draws on the screen in the 3D preview: nine looks, moods like happy, sleepy, surprised and love, blinks, glances, pokes and shakes.
Yes. Presets, screen placement, eye preview and both exports are free and run in your browser. Generating a custom head with AI uses PrintPal AI credits or a Pro / Studio subscription, like our other AI generators.
The Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.28 (ESP32-S3R2, 16 MB flash, 2 MB PSRAM, GC9A01 240×240 round LCD, CST816S touch, QMI8658 IMU). Other 1.28″ round display boards with a Φ38–39 mm outline generally fit too, but the USB-C channel and firmware are made for this one.
Yes. Upload an STL, OBJ, GLB or a textured OBJ ZIP — ideally a head or bust with a flat bottom. The tool scales it to your chosen height, lets you spin it to face forward, and cuts the face plate and puck cavity wherever you place the screen. Textured models are reduced to your chosen number of filament colors for the 3MF.
Each triangle is tagged with a filament slot using the same painting scheme Bambu Studio and OrcaSlicer use for MMU painting, and the file carries a project profile with your palette, so the shells open with the right colors already assigned. You only map the filaments to your AMS slots.
Rarely. The face shell prints bezel-down with the cavity opening upward and the back shell sits on its flat split face, so most heads print support-free. Long ears or horns that stick out sideways may want tree supports.
Yes. Plug the Waveshare ESP32-S3 puck in with a data USB-C cable and click Flash to board in Chrome or Edge. We ship a precompiled image; your browser writes it over USB serial. Safari and iPhones cannot do this. The source ZIP is still there if you want to compile it yourself.
It is in the source ZIP linked in the tool: a single Arduino sketch that draws the eyes with a signed-distance renderer into a TFT_eSPI sprite, reads the touch controller and IMU, and keeps a per-device look in flash. Serial commands let you puppeteer the face from a computer.
Pick a preset and recolor it, or upload your own STL, OBJ or GLB and place the screen on it.