Vectric Customer

A client asked if I could make and engrave some tiny puzzle pieces (1.2" x 0.75" x 0.625"). I cut these two out as a test, and engraved my kid's names on them. Right one is Cherry, left is Mahogany with one coat of Danish oil.

Engraving is 0.09" - 0.11" tall, and came out a little cloudy. Wish I had a laser to see if that would work better.

Anyways, I'll probably make a necklace for my wife out of these 'test' pieces.

Client liked them so I cut a bunch. No engraving.



Put a few of the leftovers together and put some epoxy on one side (with a little gold in it for sparkle) to hold it together. I'll probably engrave something on the other side and epoxy that as well.

Mobius, Those came out great. I 've been trying to cut some examples since I saw your
first post with no luck. I tried some online piece generators that seemed to work well as
far as generating the piece vectors. I tested a 4 piece group, separated them into individual
parts and profile cut them on the outside, but they don't fit, close, but I'm missing something .

Can you share how to cut these as you seem to have a perfect fit!

Thanks, Scott

Hi Scott,

I found a puzzle piece shape I liked through an image search and vectorized it using Inkscape. I then imported the vector into V-Carve and copied it a few times to test virtual fitment.

My first test cuts didn't fit either, the vectors just didn't quite match. I ended up rebuilding the piece, starting with the 'female' sides. I offset the 'female' sides outwards 0.001", which gave me new 'knob' or 'male' sides which matched the 'female' sections closely and were slightly smaller in order to fit together.

I then took those new 'male' sides and replaced the 'male' sides on the original vector. After a little node editing and copy pasta, they now all appeared to fit together in any orientation. And so it was for the physical pieces as well.

I've attached a .dxf of my puzzle piece for your convenience.
Connor

Connor, Thank you for the info and the example file, very helpful. Didn't think it was a
quick and easy solution, i will have to play around with node editing the vectors I have
and testing them out. This would make an awesome gadget if someone smarter than I
could figure out a mathematical solution to this !

again thanks for the info

Scott

Just put a little clip regarding these on YouTube if anyone wants to check it out:

Cool video, Connor! Thank you!

So, what bit did you use to profile them ?

Xxray wrote:So, what bit did you use to profile them ?

A 1/16" 2 flute downcut bit from ToolsToday.