Puzzle Gift Box
I was browsing for some interesting things to 3D print from All3Dprints while also looking to hone my 3D printing and Cadding skills. One of the more interesting items that piqued my attention was a labyrinth-style puzzle gift box by SneakyPoo on thingiverse and thought I'd share it with my experiences and my take on it. (Also featuring some colourful Canadian currency)
Tinkering With the CAD
I used TinkerCad as the platform for learning basic CAD skills due to its really simple to use UI as opposed to Solidworks and Fusion360 (though my University gives free access to these software).
I decided one improvement i would make is to personalize it by adding an embossed To: and From: names on the side of the gift box.
The other is to make different patterns to make the puzzle more unique and challenging since it can grow old if there's only one pattern, as well as in general, recreating this puzzle. I still haven't figured out how to make my own generator from TinkerCad. That'll be an exploration for the future.
Outer Piece
To make the outer piece, I used the polygon shape generator and then stacked a solid cylinder shape on top, making sure to align it by using the snap-to-grid by 1mm on the bottom right corner of the screen. Then, make the a trapezoid using a custom shape generator. Change the bottom and top face width and depth according to how wide and deep you want the labyrinth to be. Then rotate it and attach it to the inner sides of the cylinder close to the top. Group all the items together.
Inner Core
Copy and paste your grouped outer piece and then ungroup it. Delete the polygon at the bottom. Then, create a solid cylinder shape the same width as the polygon and stack the copied smaller cylinder on top of it. To make the labyrinth, I used the shape generator for a trapezoid and adjusted the width of the bottom face and top face to match the trapezoid extrusion on the outer piece.
Custom Text Generator
Use the custom text generator, to personalize a message or write "to:" and "from:" at the side of the labyrinth to make it more personalized.
Print It
I printed mine in two colours, yellow and black. I also wanted to print one in clear for the outside as a nice demo piece but didn't have time for it.
Here's the print settings I used on Cura, printed with Innofil PLA plastic at 210 degrees celsius.
Outer Piece:
Layer Height 0.25
20% Infill
No Supports
Skirt
Top Bottom Thickness: 1mm.
Inside Core:
Layer Height 0.15
20% Infill
No Supports
Skirt
The rest are default
It took about 3 hours each to print.
Enjoy!
Have fun and Happy Holidays!
Scale it up or down depending on how big an item you can hide. With the current scale, you can easily hide bills, keys, and in my case baby carrots.