Laser Cut and UV Printed Jigsaw Puzzle

This week we're UV Printing and Laser Cutting a Jigsaw Puzzle! See how we quickly create beautiful custom jigsaw puzzles by combining these 2 technologies together. We use our TroGlass Clear 6mm Cast Acrylic on the Mutoh ValueJet 426UF and the Speedy 360 CO2 laser cutting machine.

Step 1: UV Printing

We cut out a rectangular piece of acrylic that is 19"x12". In the UV settings we pick "under-colour" and "white-on-colour", the reason we do so is because we want to see the image through (and behind) the clear acrylic - not on top. We flip the image horizontally because it has to be print reversed.

Step 2: Engraving the Front

We then put our acrylic facing up into the lase machine. We engrave the text and logo on the front of the acrylic. In the video we used the Trotec Speedy 360 laser machine with 100 speed and 70 power setting for the engraving.

Step 3: Cutting the Puzzle

In the artwork file you will see the red cut-lines for the jigsaw. After printing and engraving you can cut the acrylic - in the video we use 100 power and 0.6 speed for the cut.

Step 4: Assemble and Enjoy!

Take the cut pieces from the machine, enjoy the assembly!

Comments

[EliotH4]

This is really cool. I had no idea that you could print on acrylic. This project gives me some ideas on how I could expand what I was working on.

https://www.instructables.com/id/Obelisk-Board-Gam...

Take the original .cdr file, break the cut off from the rest of it. Take all the graphics and add some color and print that on the bottom. Then swap out the arrows I have on each tile for a surface raster, could probably just do a defocused cut to get the same effect. Then you'd have an acrylic game board with color and nice heavy pieces which the arrows printed on the top surface.

[Trotec Laser Canada]

Thanks very much! That does sound like a great idea!

[EliotH4]

We would enjoy collaborating with you on this. We can add color to
the laser cut / etch files, we have already done this for the chipboard
version of the game (see www.ahgames.shop ). What file types would you prefer for
your equipment? We have correl draw so we can export lots of different
file types. Tortec HQ is only 4-5 hours from us so if you wanted to do a
joint video on this afterwards we would totally be up for driving over
on a long weekend.

Best Regards,

-Eliot & Asya-