This is a puzzle box. To open it you need to perform a certain gesture and press a button. The gesture is defined by the shape of an internal ball bearing maze. You can easily create your own maze and plans using the website www.mazepuzzlebox.co.uk. The design is parametric, making it easy to make with materials of differing thickness.
Someone who doesn't know how to open it will struggle for a long time, especially if you give them no clues. Once you've learnt the gesture, you can open the box in a couple of seconds. My uncle (who is a maker working at a museum) took 24 hours to open it, with a team of interested buddies, an xray machine, a metal detector and large magnets!
Thanks
Many thanks to London Hackspace, and everyone who has helped me out with learning how to use the laser cutter! Thanks Lou for the good photos! This design has taught me a lot about using the laser cutter, parametric design and designing for CNC. This is about the 12th version, so it's pretty reliable by now. I hope the instructions are good enough!
Tools and Materials
Tools: a laser cutter, a CAD program
Materials: a sheet of 4mm ply, PVA glue, a small rare earth magnet, 2 x 25x4mm springs (you can get them from pens), a 4mm ball bearing and 2 x 10mm of 4mm metal rod (I use brass).
Someone who doesn't know how to open it will struggle for a long time, especially if you give them no clues. Once you've learnt the gesture, you can open the box in a couple of seconds. My uncle (who is a maker working at a museum) took 24 hours to open it, with a team of interested buddies, an xray machine, a metal detector and large magnets!
Thanks
Many thanks to London Hackspace, and everyone who has helped me out with learning how to use the laser cutter! Thanks Lou for the good photos! This design has taught me a lot about using the laser cutter, parametric design and designing for CNC. This is about the 12th version, so it's pretty reliable by now. I hope the instructions are good enough!
Tools and Materials
Tools: a laser cutter, a CAD program
Materials: a sheet of 4mm ply, PVA glue, a small rare earth magnet, 2 x 25x4mm springs (you can get them from pens), a 4mm ball bearing and 2 x 10mm of 4mm metal rod (I use brass).
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Design your unique maze!
Go here http://www.mazepuzzlebox.co.uk/create and draw your maze. To make the maze harder, use dead ends and junctions where timing becomes more important. Click 'create box' and then enter your material thickness. Click 'generate plans' to get the plans that are correct for the thickness of your material.
Inspect the plans
open the DXF in your CAD program (QCAD is free ) and check things look OK. I use an HPC laser and the software won't import the file as it stands, so I have to save it with QCAD and then it works. I'd be really interested to hear if other software works without having to open and save it in a CAD program.
Laser settings
The finished CAD file has 4 colours, white and grey for the cuts, green for patterns and blue for etched parts. The settings I use on a 30W cutter are:
* etch (blue): speed 200, power 30, scan gap 0.05
* pattern (green): speed 100, power 40
* cut (white and grey): speed 4.2, power 100
It is well worth experimenting to make sure that the etched parts are sufficiently etched. This is hard to explain, but if you look at the plans (image above), the ball rolls on the big etched rectangle on layer 4 with layer 5 (the maze) and layer 6 on top of it. The material is meant to be 4mm, but it is often thinner (my 4mm ply is actually 3.72mm). So we have to etch at least .3mm out of one layer for the 4mm ball to roll in the space between 2 layers.
Go here http://www.mazepuzzlebox.co.uk/create and draw your maze. To make the maze harder, use dead ends and junctions where timing becomes more important. Click 'create box' and then enter your material thickness. Click 'generate plans' to get the plans that are correct for the thickness of your material.
Inspect the plans
open the DXF in your CAD program (QCAD is free ) and check things look OK. I use an HPC laser and the software won't import the file as it stands, so I have to save it with QCAD and then it works. I'd be really interested to hear if other software works without having to open and save it in a CAD program.
Laser settings
The finished CAD file has 4 colours, white and grey for the cuts, green for patterns and blue for etched parts. The settings I use on a 30W cutter are:
* etch (blue): speed 200, power 30, scan gap 0.05
* pattern (green): speed 100, power 40
* cut (white and grey): speed 4.2, power 100
It is well worth experimenting to make sure that the etched parts are sufficiently etched. This is hard to explain, but if you look at the plans (image above), the ball rolls on the big etched rectangle on layer 4 with layer 5 (the maze) and layer 6 on top of it. The material is meant to be 4mm, but it is often thinner (my 4mm ply is actually 3.72mm). So we have to etch at least .3mm out of one layer for the 4mm ball to roll in the space between 2 layers.
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Thanks again, this is pretty sweet
-kholtz
holtz.kristen@gmail.com
I'm having some huge problems getting the file to properly download from the mazepuzzlebox.co.uk site. The hinges and maze both don't show up. Does anyone have any suggestions or can download and email it to me?
Thank you!
To add some difficulty to the puzzle I would put some soft material (suede-paper or felt) in the inner walls of the maze, so the ball could run without any noise. ;)
Sometimes I put ball bearings in the space so it confuses the sound. But it's already really hard for someone who doesn't know what's inside!
Thanks!
/Anders
Matt
Keep me posted!
Anyhow, I can obviously put in the line work manually on my own. Just thought I would ask first in case I am missing something obvious. Great box. Love it!
p.s. I tried downloading multiple box files from multiple browsers (e.g. Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer) both on PC and Mac.
I take it you made and downloaded the dxf from the website: mazepuzzlebox.co.uk ?
I'm afraid that the DXF files are very buggy, they only seem to reliably open with qcad. So I'd suggest installing this and then opening and saving the file. Once it's saved with qcad you might be able to open it with your other programs.
If you don't want to or it doesn't work, send me the link to your box and I'll open, save and send it to you!
I've learnt to loathe the DXF format! I'll be converting it all to SVG in the future and let people convert the file themselves.
Matt
Matt
http://mattvenn.net/files/boxmaze_829.dxf
Thanks
I use CorelDraw to make other boxes, but I find your design very unique.
Keep of the great work!
Cheers,
Matt
Matt
Thanks!
It worked out fine. All the parts fit correctly (with a bit of sanding) and it works well. I used a regular BB and regular pen springs for hardware.
Thanks for the plans! I'm currently working on staining it and I'm planning to line the inside with felt (mostly to cover some imperfections I couldn't sand out).
could you send me a photo?
Also, it would be great to have a copy of the syntax error you're getting, so I can fix it and improve the instructions...
Nice one,
Matt
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v445/Moonie1998/DSC02159.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v445/Moonie1998/DSC02160.jpg
The syntax error popped up in python as soon as I typed in "python boxmaze.py" into the command line. It acted like I was typing in nonsense. I got the exact same error no matter what I typed in - just "syntax error".
python -V
looking forward to seeing your box!