Angel/Demon Puzzle

thingiverse

This brain teaser will showcase an angel or a demon based on how you arrange the pieces. Although this puzzle isn't much of a challenge (it only consists of three parts), it's a great conversation starter to place next to your copy of GQ magazine (or whatever people use nowadays to impress visiting friends) and then casually pretend you didn't notice it until your friends ask about it. Let me know if this trick works (I have no social connections). The puzzle is based on M.C. Escher's "Circle Limit IV" mosaic design, where angels and demons fill a hyperbolic space in a repeating pattern. I reprojected the design into two-dimensional Euclidean space and extracted a hexagonal tesselating unit from it. By carefully splitting this unit tile, an angel or demon can be composed just by rearranging the pieces. To complete the model, I included a tray to hold the pieces. There's a hole at the back that allows you to push the pieces out if they fit too tightly. The gap between the parts is approximately 0.4mm, which should be suitable for most printers. This project required a significant amount of work. Preprocessing Escher's design using Photoshop and then vectorizing it with Illustrator was just the beginning. I had to export the vectors to Fusion360 and build up the puzzle pieces there. The STL file produced by 360 wasn't watertight, so I used MeshLab and Blender to clean it up. What a relief! Enjoy this brain teaser! **PS:** This Angel/Demon puzzle was my submission for the [MakeAnything Puzzle Design Challenge](https://www.myminifactory.com/competition/make-anything-design-challenge-139). You can see the entry model [here](https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-68006).