Hi everybody, I am trying to make some glowforge cut jigsaw puzzles for charity. My idea is to get some artists to donate some signed limited edition prints that I then cut into a limited edition jigsaw puzzles. I saw @jbmanning5 amazing posts about making jigsaw puzzles , but I’ve had some trouble when trying to make them on my glowforge. I tried various thicknesses of chip stock as recommended and mounted the photos on with 3m mounting spray. For some reason the recommend settings of 180/100 aren’t cutting through the print and cardboard. It’s taking 3 passes to cut through all of the way, but each pass leaves more scaring and burn marks on the photo paper. Also the more cuts and the looser the pieces fit together. I was able to get some puzzles made by mounting a photo to the bottom of acrylic but those pieces were also pretty lose compared to a pro puzzle.
I’ve tried masking tape sheet on the photo paper, but the tape keeps melting to the photo paper at the edges. I probably need a masking tape with less tack. I have also tried cutting with the print on top and bottom, though I haven’t tried putting an additional layer between the chipboard and the honeycomb (as jbmanning5 recommends).
Anyway any help would be greatly appreciated. I’ve gone through about 40 pieces of various thicknesses of chipboard and photo paper. I’ve got the artist lined up for the charity. Now I need to figure out how I can cut them without ruining the image with a charred up mess.
Right now I’ve tried everything from 100/60 to 200/100 and everything seems to burn and nothing seems to cut through.
I am using svg files generated with jigsaw puzzle generated, edited in illustrator and exported as svg
Not sure what I am doing wrong, or what to tweak to get better results, but any advice is appreciaited.