Basic Puzzle Pieces

I made these basic puzzle pieces to help teach my younger sister how to sound longer words out. I wanted her to have a fun way of sounding out words, since she loves reading!

You will need a (reasonably) thick piece of wood or a piece of cardboard, and a laser cutter. (The cover picture was made out of wood.)

Go to tinkercad.com and create a new 3D design. If you do not have a Tinkercad account, make one and you can get started!

Once you're in your new 3D project, drag a red box out onto the plane. Change the height and width to whatever you prefer. (20.00 in Tinkercad is 2 centimeters. 30.00 is 3, etc.) Highlight the box you've made, then copy and paste! Drag them away from one another, and now you now have two identical boxes.

If you would like to tweak my original design instead of making your own, click here.

Drag a triangular prism out onto the plane. There is an option to change the angle of it- make it so that it is standing up on one end and it is at a 90 degree angle. Copy and paste it. Then, fit one of your triangles to the right side of your box. Adjust the height, then highlight both the triangle and the box and click the button near the upper right hand corner that looks like two shapes being merged.

Once you are done with step three, take the other triangle and place it directly across from its counterpart. DO NOT MAKE THE POINTED ENDS OF THE TRIANGLE FACE EACH OTHER!! You need to have the pointed end of the first triangle facing the flat side of the second.

Click on the SECOND triangle (the one with the flat side facing the pointed side of the other triangle) and click the option to make it a hole. The triangle should turn grey with stripes. Highlight that triangle and its box and click the merge button. (The same one you clicked in part one of this step.)

Above the shapes, there is a button that says 'Export'. Click on it. Then, depending on what you'd like to use to print the puzzle pieces out, download it as a file. I used an SVG file because I am laser cutting this project, but use the other files if you're going to 3D print. Because I used a laser cutter, the rest of the steps will be relevant to laser cutters.

Go to app.glowforge.com. Sign in. (If you do not have a laser cutter, you'll have to order one, sorry.) Import your SVG file.

Place whatever material you are using for your puzzle pieces. Select the power and speed. (I used cardboard, and put it on 80 power, 170 speed.) Then, move the outline of your puzzle pieces to wherever you would like to cut them out.

If you have a fan for your laser cutter, (This is definitely recommended.) turn the knob on it about a quarter way to the right. This will prevent smoke from getting everywhere. If you do not have a fan, then.. outside? Maybe? Might be a fire risk, though.

Press start on your computer, then press the big blue-ish button on the laser cutter than looks like it would have a big 'DO NOT PRESS' sign above it. Hopefully it doesn't. Then, your pieces will start to cut, and you have your puzzle pieces at last! Don't open the cutter at once- wait for a little while before opening to make sure your house/garage/wherever-you-put-the-laser-cutter doesn't smell too bad. After that, you're done! Yay!