Turtle Pause Puzzle

Made on a Glowforge
#1

When we started this lockdown 6 weeks ago, I decided that I needed to do a better job of keeping in touch with my Grandma. I started writing her letters 2 to 3 times a week, something I used to do years ago. It’s become increasingly difficult to come up with entertaining stories when every day is Groundhog Day, so I came up with a new idea… a puzzle, something in high demand these days, and mail her a piece or two every couple of days. This is the result:

IMG_3435

It’s not my finest work, but I think it will serve the purpose well and give Grandma something to look forward to for a couple of weeks. A couple of notes on this process. With the inherent inconsistent thickness of paint pouring, it was difficult to find the right settings for engraving. Secondly, I had a near heart attack when the first operation was the cut, and one puzzle piece did not cut completely through, leaving it offset from the rest. I had to wait an excruciating 23 minutes to find out if it would impact that section of the picture. Luckily, it does not appear to be noticeable. If you can tell me which puzzle piece was the wonky one, I will declare you amazing. If anyone has any insight as to how GF determines order of operations to help to avoid issues like this in the future, that would be greatly appreciated.

19 Likes
#2

What a very nice way to stay in touch with your Grandma!

1 Like
#3

This is a great idea. Maybe I need to send some puzzles to friends.

1 Like
#4

I have no idea how the order of operations is determined, but you can click and drag the operations in the UI and change their order. I like to do engraves first, in order to prevent mishaps such as the one you described.
I have to say, they usually are anyway, but I often change things around to better suit my projects.

#5

I believe that the default order of operations is based on the hex value of the colors.

For more info: Custom Inkscape, Illustrator, CorelDraw and Affinity Designer Color Palettes for ordering operations in GFUI

2 Likes
#6

I wonder how the machine decides things as well. I recently made some acrylic parts which each had 3 internal cut outs as well as the outside cut outs. The machine jumped around doing an internal cut in one then moving to another where it cut 2 of the 3. Then on to another and so on finally returning to the first one to complete it. Now perhaps when I designed the part in inkscape I may have created/adjusted some of those internal cut outs after I already created the overall shape but once I was satisfied with the design then I duplicated it and ran it. I didn’t expect the machine to only cut part of each piece before moving to the next. It was clearly not the quickest way to do things.

#7

What a lovely idea! She will be thrilled!