Arbitrary Burr Puzzle STL Engine Six-Piece, Parametric

thingiverse

I've been fascinated by brain teasers and burr puzzles since childhood. I still remember the thrill of solving Philippe Dubois' burr from wood, which kept me engaged for a 24-hour marathon session. When I finally got my hands on a 3D printer, one of my first designs was a FreeCAD version of that same puzzle. Now, I've created a six-piece burr "engine" using OpenSCAD, which can accept a matrix of zeroes and ones to represent empty positions in the 3D model. This means you can add your own description for a different puzzle design (Disclaimer: this isn't a generator; you'll need a valid puzzle description to create a new STL). Philippe Dubois' burr (difficulty level: 6.1) and Bill Cutler's "Buffling" Burr (difficulty level: 5) are both included. To switch between them, simply uncomment one and comment out the other in the scad file. I found the latter much easier to solve, taking me only 15 minutes, but it was still a blast. Bill's Buffling Burr requires support for one piece, while my other design prints well without support. Be cautious when designing your own sets about support needs. I used unit sizes of 7 and 6, resulting in pieces measuring 14x14x42 mm and 12x12x36 mm respectively. You can also use different colors for each set to avoid mixing them up later. For those who prefer not to figure it out themselves, solutions are available online. However, I think it's more fun to solve it by yourself! Some useful links on burr puzzles include: https://www.craftsmanspace.com/free-projects/six-piece-burr-puzzles.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr_puzzle https://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~storer/JimPuzzles/BURR/3PieceTrickSegerblom/IbmPage.pdf