The REAL 3D Jigsaw Puzzle - 55 Pieces

myminifactory

Human: Ready for a challenge? This isn't your ordinary jigsaw puzzle. Not only do you have to figure out where each piece goes, in some cases you need to figure out the order in which they connect! My nephews and I had a great time trying to piece this thing together, and I don't mind admitting I got stumped (and furious) many times. This puzzle is also special because you can only make it with a 3D Printer! Maybe it can be built if you used a laser cutter or something of the sort, but even then it'd be difficult holding the thing in place. Background: I loved jigsaw puzzles as a kid, getting great enjoyment from piecing together hot-air balloons, zoos, beautiful ocean scenes and flower-field landscapes. Then Puzz-3D came out with their foam puzzles to make all sorts of buildings. But I remember being disappointed in never seeing the jigsaw puzzle I had imagined: a true 3D puzzle, something solid and intricate. This Make Anything Design Challenge made me reminisce about that imagined puzzle, and my passion forced me to partake! How I Designed It: I first started with a globe .obj file I found for free online, and drew some 2D curves (55 of them), similar to jigsaw puzzle cuts. I offset it to a .4mm wide cut (after some lengthy and frustrating printing tests, I found that .2mm was too small, .6mm too large), and extruded it to be larger than the part of the globe I was cutting. After A LOT of extruding, rotating, boolean splitting, and checking those splits for any unexpected splits, I produced the fragmented Earth you see here today. Even I was surprised by how strange the puzzle shapes came out! If there's a lot of interest, I may make more using different images on the surface, using different shapes (other than spherical). I hope you enjoy playing with it as much as I did making it!