Give Your Brain a Workout with a Fractal PuzzleWatch the Video!

A fractal puzzle isn’t like an ordinary jigsaw puzzle. As its name implies, it is made up of uniquely shaped “fractals” instead of regular puzzle pieces. A fractal is essentially a complex, never-ending pattern that repeats itself across different scales. To get a better feel for the challenge of a fractal puzzle, click the link above to watch

the video.

I found the puzzles on a laser Facebook group and wanted to make some myself. After searching on the Internet, I found them on an Instruc-table and decided to give it a try (Google “fractal puzzle instructable”). The designs are made by Dutch puzzle designer Oskar van Deventer with software he wrote himself (I believe).

The project was a bit of trial and error to start with as I was brand new to using laser machines. I had a 40 watt laser without air assist and decided to start out using MDF to create the puzzles. It left a whole lot of smoke residue and they really didn’t come out very nice looking. But they were functional and great to play around with. The first one I made I accidentally dropped and it took me four hours and three family members to put back together!

Once the first one was out of the way, I started looking at how to make them much cleaner so I decided to mask the pieces with application tape. This resulted in nice clean puzzles but required a whole lot of cleanup work to remove all the application tape.

My small little laser broke down and rather than spending a small for-tune to fix it, I decided to upgrade to a much better machine in its bigger 50 watt brother. The new machine has a whole lot more power, it has air assist and it has a much larger bed. At this point, I also decided that I really didn’t like working with MDF as it left a big mess in the machine that required constant cleaning, and MDF, although strong, just doesn’t look as nice as plywood. So for the next puzzle I used basic structural plywood. This puzzle came out super clean and was so much easier to cut on the larger machine. I used a smaller focal point lens with this new machine, which allowed the air assist to be much closer to the plywood. This created a really nice, clean puzzle that fit together beautifully and easily. It was ready to frustrate the heck out of friends and family.

I decided it would be great to make some of these puzzles from clear acrylic to make them even more difficult. They came out beautifully but because the pieces were quite thin, it wasn’t very functional because the pieces broke so easily. The puzzle looks great and does work but in 3mm thick acrylic, it just wasn’t functional. The next acrylic one I will make from 4mm acrylic and see how that works.

In the meantime I found another design from Oskar van Deventer, which was even larger and only has a few pieces so I decided to make that one as well. It came out great and is equally frustrating to solve.

By Roel WijmansPhoto Credit: Roel Wijmans

Copyright 2017 all rights reservedThe Engravers Journal-www.engraversjournal.com

Cool Job Tech Notes:

Laser: CO2, 50 watts

Lens: 2”/50.8mm FocalLength

Material: structural plywood

Speed: 9mm/s

Power: 45%