Pacman Cookie Cutters !

Probably you can buy them ready made but I'd like to show you a way to make them yourself off scrap materials. Gobble gobble gobble!

Step 1: Materials Needed

You need some thin scrap metal, you can buy it in from the hardware store buy it's more fun to recycle something designed to be otherwise useless and environmentally negative. The one I used I took from a metal box of bottle of whiskey.
I had already used the original red/yellow cover of the case as the ground plane for a WiFi patch antenna (see two of the pictures below).
Materials needed:
Scrap metal sheet
Pliers, rib joint pliers
Scissors
Permanent marker
Round pencil
Hard ruler
Square angle ruler
A book
Hard gloves
Safety glasses
Round shaped knick-knack
Template for Pacman, Paul ( and Steve and Matthew)
Sugar, flour, butter, eggs...you know for what.

Step 2: Flattening, Drawing, Marking, Cutting, Marking Again

To do so you need the pliers and the rib joint pliers. You may have different kind of tools you may find good anyways. In case, of course they are fine.

Unfold the round edge right at the joint along the side of the box. The box will start to open quite easily. Do not force it. You need to remove the bottom cover. With the pliers unfold the round edge all along its perimeter. Be patient and work the edge a little at a time. The cover will come off easily and the box will open (not really much) flat. Make it flat watching out the sharp edges.

Step 3: Mark & Cut

With the hard ruler and the marker, mark a 1 inch (2.5 cm) strip on a side of the sheet of metal.

The ruler you see in the picture I made out of an aluminum bar taken from a 19inch rack of an electrical control panel. The markings were done with Autocad and printed on regular A3 paper. Glue and transparent protective plastic made the rest.

Now, if haven't done already, wear your safety goggles.
It is time to be precise. With the scissors (a regular but pretty strong pair) cut the strip along the line.

With the ruler and square angle ruler mark the lines where you will bend the strip.

Step 4: More Cutting. Bending

Make a notch as shown in the picture and bend for a few mm (1/4 inch) on both sides of the strip. This will make an interlock when it comes to close the shapes as in the picture.

Start bending using pliers, the book or anything you fell confortable with. Use the round knick knack to make, well... the round part.

Step 5: Add Some Features

The pictures show a detail I cut and bent to keep well stright and harder the cookie cutter straight borders.
Interlock the two sides of strip. Align, do the two small cuts and bend the joint to keep the joint from undoing. The last two pictures refer to Pacman rather than the Ghosts, but the principle is the same for both the caracters.

Step 6: Pacman With His Eye (did He Really Have One?) and You're Done.

Do your Pacman now. No special hints here. Just follow the template, bend and curve.

Using some of the strip you cut make Pacman's eye with the aid of the pencil and pliers.

Done!

I do not post pictures of the biscuits I tried to do with these cutters because they went on fire.
Biscuits on fire, biscuits on fire !!!

Ciao e presto

5Volt

Comments

[jtobako]

on old (and some new) cookie cutters the seam is soldered. just an excuse to play with fire : )

[LasVegas]

More often I see them spot welded. Soldering is fine, but the amount of lead-free solder required would be expensive. Besides, I find the crimping technique attractive.

[jtobako]

about a penny's worth of solder is not expensive.

[5Volt]

I chose crimping because it looked cleaner to me. In the long run solder might become weak and eventually break. Also, everybody might have cutting and crimping ability while soldering can be very frustrating to someone. A strong (not for electronics) solder would be necessary, in case. Spot welding would be the best probably, but definitely out of my reach. Also, I like origami ... Ciao

[jtobako]

i understand compleately. i just wanted to throw out the idea that there were other options if someone wanted it.

[karen608]

As is very decorative with painted sides. and i like the join, very creative. Now any shape can be a cookie cutter/cookie. Just mail the cookies to instructables, as they make all this possible. The reason the boy is screaming in cartoon is: he's not wearing oven mitts. He's not afraid of the fire one bit. Cool cartoon.

[HamO]

Well done! Good pics. When can we expect cookies for us all?

[5Volt]

I have to scrub the first ones off the oven, first ! Thank you. 5Volt

[ongissim]

Great concept!

[5Volt]

Thank you . 5V.

[jarv34]

do we get to see any pictures of the cookies?

[evy-wevy]

wow! that's great creativity! You sohuld make some others and sell them online!