How did you get a seamless surface? Even mating the bottom surfaces will still have kerf effects. Does the dome compression solve that for you and therefore you only really see it if you look very closely at the interlocking tabs themselves? Or did you kerf adjust each piece? They can’t lay flat on a plane anyway so I’d guess each piece would have to be cut without shared edges (or at most one shared edge, in pairs, but that doesn’t seem like much efficiency gain), so kerf adjustment is on the table… hmm. Feels like you’d have to kerf adjust, the friction is probably needed to hold it together at all as you build.
How’d you handle cut registration to the printed image? The average printer has some XY play, and most setups can’t handle 1/16” materials. I assume you must have precut a precise shape on 1/16” material and glued a hand-cut print to it, then flipped it and used a jig to handle precise placement for final cutting and scoring?
Am I in the ballpark on any of these guesses?
Also where’d you source your plywood? 1/16” isn’t always easy to find.
Also also did you mask the printed surface? It’s beautifully clean.
Yes, kerf-adjusted each piece. You’re right, they can’t lie flat on a plane — although during assembly, you can manage to lie flat groups 2 to 3 pieces wide before they start refusing to fit.
Using a laser-cut alignment sled. Best explained with the 90-second video found in my tutorial. In addition, when dividing the puzzle into multiple sheets, I avoid placing the division in areas where a misalignment would be more noticeable. Within the same sheet, if you keep adjacent pieces close together, the relative error cancels out.
Yes, in addition to small inaccuracies in rotation, scale, and skew. See the Q&A at the bottom of the tutorial page.
Yes, and this was a serious pain point until I discovered a paper that was easy to de-mask without tearing, a textured cotton paper. All of the inkjet “Photo Papers” stick too strongly, even with low-tack masking. The tradeoff is that you don’t get as much contrast as with photo paper; blacks aren’t as deep, though it’s still a little better than Fuji “Deep Matte” prints.
Huh your registration technique is interesting. You clearly get good results.
If you’re a premium subscriber I wonder if offsetting for error in the ruler tool would be possible? Would prevent having to modify and reupload the vector.
Yes, could do it that way too. If a size adjustment larger than 2% is necessary, you have to remember to do the kerf adjustment after the size adjustment. That would be the case, for example, if you printed the page at a different scale.
Lately I’ve been having problems with skew (about 0.2mm), which this method can’t compensate for. I haven’t yet figured out whether it’s a problem with the GF or the printer (or both). This accounts for most of the error I’m getting lately. (The tolerance for jigsaw puzzles is around 0.2mm; that’s when an error starts to become noticeable.) It still doesn’t matter for adjacent pieces cut from the same sheet.
This is incredible!!! The code part being above my head - I would absolutely pay to have the laser file if you decide to put it up for sale! My family loves puzzles and this would really level up Christmas family puzzle time.
As much as I love puzzles and creating with my I have to recognize this is way over my head and a rabbit hole I am not ready to explore.
Thank you very much @Purplie for sharing your innovative technique and showing us what wonderful things can be made in more determined minds with capable hands.
I have to recognize this is way over my head and a rabbit hole I am not ready to explore.