2nd attempt at puzzle… This time out of black acrylic (mask is still on in pics - afraid I’ll never get it together otherwise - no way to tell front from back of pieces). the smaller one was my first cut on “blackboard” material but I found too many small pieces. The bigger one out of black acrylic still has small pieces I don’t like but… kind of still in progress. I put 14 Halloween " whimsies" in there (That’s what I’m callin’ them ) Feedback? will be "fun " to de-mask… no hurry at the moment.
I use long strips of Gorilla Tape while it’s still in the Glowforge bed. Lift that out as a solid piece, then tape the other side. Press firmly, let sit for a few minutes, and then peel off the masking in one continuous sheet.
Very satisfying.
Some of the very thin pieces (tabs and animal legs, for instance) might be too brittle in acrylic, but if so, it will be obvious when you assemble it.
I’ve been doing my puzzles in transparent acrylic, and my “whimsies” are usually engraved from the back. That lets me offset the whimsies slightly, which gives a little more heft to shapes with narrow bits. I can also work in some tabs and slots so they’re not free floating.
Like @Doppler said, use tape to get it out in one piece. Looks like you have the sheet adhesive masking, which is what I use to remove my puzzles from the cutting bed.
I like the creativity of the whimsies, although I would love to see the a crazy cut style for the pieces vs. strip cut (aka standard jigsaw look). Strip cut is so boring when you can cut any shape you can think of with the Glowforge! For example, have you seen Liberty Puzzles?
I cut mine out of acrylic in crazy shapes, and I’d love to see more people doing that! Looking gret for a 2nd attempt
The beauty of plain acrylic puzzles is there’s no way to know which side is “up” (unless your victim knows about the subtle slope on the cut, but I’ve played around with focusing lower in the material to reduce that.)
You can do that with mixed wood species puzzles as well.
The majority of my puzzles were plain material, i.e. no picture to match up.
like I mentioned in my other post( Finally Made a Puzzle) , I used an online puzzle generator that saves to svg. Then in Inkscape I manually moved and tweaked the nodes, dropping in the whimsies and then stretching the nodes/handles and vectors around them. Then changing the shapes of the standard puzzle pieces to create all unique shapes for the interlocking pieces. Time consuming (kind of), but I enjoy it. Let me know if any questions!
) Feedback? will be "fun " to de-mask… no hurry at the moment.
