alt.hn

3/30/2026 at 11:20:02 PM

Show HN: I turned a sketch into a 3D-print pegboard for my kid with an AI agent

https://github.com/virpo/pegboard

by virpo

3/31/2026 at 4:00:37 PM

This is great dude, awesome resource to complete the boring stuff, then do the fun stuff on your own, or enjoy it I mean.

I'm certain your child appreciates this!

by DanDeBugger

3/31/2026 at 7:26:39 AM

This looks like a great project for laser cutting, but I'm actually more interested in the peg-board itself. I would love to have a big one for the kids room that was compatible with the BRIO construction sets.

by johanvts

3/31/2026 at 10:06:28 AM

Ha, I didn't even know BRIO had a construction set. We have the BRIO train and lots of LEGO here, but that somehow never crossed my radar. Now I kind of have to get one :)

For a bigger pegboard, I'd almost certainly go the plywood route, ideally with access to a CNC drill or a laser cutter through some community workshop. The hole precision mattered more than I expected, and getting a whole board right with a handheld drill was surprisingly tedious.

by virpo

3/31/2026 at 5:08:28 PM

They are great sets. I would worry there would be lots of small splinters coming from the holes with plywood, at least with pine it looks like it would be an issue. Do you use pine or poplar or birch or bamboo or something else? Thanks.

by johanvts

3/31/2026 at 7:33:39 PM

Your instinct is right - pine is just too soft for this, and I would expect the holes to splinter.

I used oak plywood, and it has held up well so far, including in our kitchen. You do get the occasional tiny splinter, but nothing serious.

The main trick for getting clean holes, especially on the back side, is to drill into a sacrificial board so the exit side stays supported.

If helpful, here's a close-up photo: <https://files.virpo.sk/pegboard.jpg>

by virpo

3/31/2026 at 3:11:49 AM

Great work.

The Agent x Parent combo has become my favorite niche in LLM space. It's unlocked so much creativity at a time where we have the least disposable time.

by prodigycorp

3/31/2026 at 4:40:18 AM

This is wonderful. The sketch-to-physical-toy pipeline is such a satisfying use of AI — you skipped the tedious CAD modeling part and spent that time actually iterating on fit and feel with your kid instead. That's the dream.

by royschwartz

3/31/2026 at 11:41:13 AM

Love this practical application of AI. Thanks for sharing the repo and the story!

by onsenhyo

3/31/2026 at 5:07:21 AM

That's a really cool project! I can imagine your kid loved seeing their sketch come to life like that.

by rakeshd

3/31/2026 at 11:09:29 AM

What is really hard for me to wrap my head around is that this is just normal for our kids now. My childhood definitely looked a lot different.

by virpo

3/31/2026 at 3:49:12 AM

This looks pretty awesome! You can take up a notch and start generating Lego blocks!

by laser9

3/31/2026 at 5:34:21 AM

For a cheap (about 500 EUR) enclosed 3D printer, what would HN recommend? I know two persons with the Bambu P2S and they seem happy with it. One of them is printing stuff daily since forever. He also showed me incredible prints using filaments with carbon inside and the result is jaw dropping (but it costs something like 6x the price of regular filaments).

Is one brand better than the other? Are they all pretty much the same by now?

by TacticalCoder

3/31/2026 at 6:48:34 AM

Aside from the occasional problems like printers waking up at night to print gibberish [0] and attempts at locking down their ecosystem [1], Bambu Lab makes the most consistent, reliable printers for casual use you will find.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/3d-printers-print-br... [1] https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/bambu-lab-controversy-de...

by frickinLasers

3/31/2026 at 2:25:15 PM

OK thanks to you all... Oh well I guess you can't have it all but for casual use I take it from the comments here it's still the way to go.

by TacticalCoder

3/31/2026 at 9:54:53 AM

I bought a Bambu A1 Mini to replace an Ender 3, thinking it would just be for occasional printing. I wanted something smaller and better looking. The opposite happened: the process got so much easier that I now regret not getting something bigger, maybe even with AMS.

So while I can't compare the whole market, I can definitely say the jump in ease of use was huge.

Prusa printers are great too, especially if you care about supporting a company that invested heavily in open source. I found them harder to justify on price, but I also understand why people choose them for that reason.

There have also been pretty public disputes around Bambu's use of open-source work from the Prusa/Slic3r ecosystem, so that is part of the decision too.

by virpo

3/31/2026 at 7:49:55 AM

I was chatting with my sister about this. She has a P2S and highly recommends it.

I did a bit of research and I agree with her. The other one that stood out was the snap maker U1 (it has a nice elegant solution for multi-colored prints, and promises to be open etc going forward).

I'm personally going with the P2S with AMS for the simplicity of the bambu ecosystem (though I'm conflicted about it).

Still after using the creality ender 3 for a long time I'm excited to see how much easier things can be. :)

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3/31/2026 at 3:45:28 PM

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