Fab Puzzle

As a gift (or small business idea) for my collegue and friend Haakon Karlsen jr, director of the MIT Fablab Lyngen Norway, I decided to make a puzzle out of one of my greatest images I took at Lyngen last summer during my first stay.

How would you make a puzzle, this typical jig saw style puzzle? Off course, there is no need to draw it all yourself. The most professional way I found is the AV Bros Puzzle pro 2.2 Photoshop plug in. You can check out the demo, but its so well protected, you cant get out a single clean puzzle file without buying it.

Since I didnt want to spend 60 € for software to make a view puzzles, there had to be an alternative. Fiona, an ex trainee of the our lab gave me a vector illustrator file with a puzzle structure she used ones.
Since my photo was 16:9, I had to adjust the size and edges, and endet up in a puzzle of 118 pieces, for a photograph with the size of  40 x 22.5cm.

One thing we cant do in a fablab, is printing photos directly on a plate. I found a nice photoservice in Amsterdam called "Eyes on Media". They have a nice online print service and even had an offer of a print on 3mm Forex 60 x 50 cm for 25 € excl. tax.

I didnt know the material Forex, so I went there and took a sample with me for testing it on the laser cutter.
It was not to hard to figure out the best settings, but the problem is that Forex is actually PVC Foam board/Panel.
You shouldent laser PVC since its poison and agressive to the laser mechanics.
I did anyway, since I had ordered allready the plate by eyesonmedia.

Laser settings:
Puzzle: 3mm forex cutting: s 2 / p 50 / ppi 200
Cardboard box: 2mm grey cardboard
cut: s 6 / p 100 / ppi 400
bend: s15 / p 35 / ppi 400
engrave: s 30 / p 30 / ppi 400

Ones the lasering is done, it's advisable to use 'contact foil' borrowed from the vinyl cutter  in order to keep the puzzle together by taking it out of the laser. its also handy to clean the burn markes that way with Aceton.

So far, puzzle = done. But i wanted a dedicated nice box so that it really can look like a product.
So i drawed one in illustrator and lasered it from normal Cardboard of 2mm thick.

Conclusion:
Most fun for me was to think of puzzle subjects that are absurd. Things which are not fotogenic, or normally not worth a puzzle.

The puzzle material has to be changed which is a pain, since Forex is actually nice to print on and feels good for puzzling.
Still the laser burns a to thick line anyway so the play between the pieces is a bit much in my opinion.
Probably printing on a nice piece of white cardboard would do the trick.

Also the box could be made out of a thinner cardboard, or maybe some nice transparent plastic?

For those who want to make their own puzzle, here are the basic files: