Laser Cutter Puzzles

Importing and Vectorizing the Image on Illustrator 

  1. Choose a picture that you want to build the puzzle with (preferably in .png,.jpeg, .jpg format).
  2. Open Adobe Illustrator 
  3. Create a new file with your preferred dimensions. 
  4. Go to File > Place and choose the image that you previously chose
    • You should now be able to click on the file and place your image
    • Click on the selection tool in the toolbar (look below) to resize your image
  1. After getting the appropriate dimensions for your image, click on it again with the selection tool and choose “Image Trace” (look below.)
  1. Your image should now be black and white. For our illustration, this is what the black-and-white image looks like:

Making the Puzzle Design

  1. Head to this link to customize your design. Curious about what each option means?
    • Seed: the seed number for randomizing the puzzle edges
    • Tab size: how big the circular tabs of the puzzle are
    • Jitter: how curvy the edges of the puzzle are
    • Corner radius: how circular the corners of your full puzzle are
    • Tiles: how many pieces are on each side of the puzzle
      • The first box is for the width
      • The second box is for the height
    • Size: the size of the puzzle in millimeters
      • The first box is for the width
      • The second box is for the height
  2. Download the SVG file
  3. Place the SVG file on your image in Illustrator
  4. Resize the puzzle to match the desired size
    i. You should have a screen that looks like the picture below:
  1. With the puzzle outline selected, change the stroke to red (#FF0000) (NOTE: make sure that it is in RGB) and change the width to 0.001. Look below for what it should look like.
  1. Save the .ai file to a flash drive.

Laser cut the puzzle

  1. Use the file from the flash drive and follow the procedure for laser cutting to laser cut your puzzle. Here is mine : )

likes