Cubism For Fun

Well, I'm now a published author. I wrote an article which appears in the latest Cubism For Fun magazine of puzzles. Here's the table of contents. And here's the article I sent (I'm not sure yet if it's identical to what they published.

Some additional information on
3D-printed puzzles

By Keith S. Jackson

Background

In CFF-65 Oskar van Deventer wrote a wonderful article on his collaboration with George Miller to design and manufacture 3D-printed puzzles. George and Oskar have built an impressive collection of clever and novel puzzles. I’d like to offer some additional information on previous efforts to use similar technologies to manufacture puzzles. I’d also like to invite the puzzle community to add to this information.

Impossible Objects

There are a number of 3D-printed pu

zzles that pre-date the work of George and Oskar. The ball-in-cage and the rook are two impossible objects in my collection that have been available for many years. I believe I acquired mine around 2000. The rook is particularly delightful as it has an internal spiral staircase that can be seen through the windows. I am not able to offer specific dates for these items, except to note that an article from January 2002 about a new rapid prototyping system installed at the University of Manitoba (http://www.umanitoba.ca/manitoban/20020109/news_5.shtml) shows a slightly different version of the rook. It would be interesting to hear if anyone can more precisely date either of these pieces.

Dexterity Puzzles

More specifically, I did an internship with Pratt and Whitney’s Turbine Airfoil Product Center in North

Haven, Connecticut between June and December of 1996. My role was to investigate the possibility of using 3D-Printing (a different layered-manufacturing process) for the production of turbine airfoils. I worked with the tooling engineers who had an on-site stereolithography printer available to them. In addition to prototyping new tool designs, they found production applications for the machine, in one case replacing a $50,000 tool with a $2,000 epoxy-filled stereolithography-built part.

I had access to this machine and I was able to manufacture at least 3 puzzles. One was a classic double-dovetail made in homage to the Sandfield brothers’ dovetail puzzle designs. That one is in the collection of Robert Sandfield. The other two were simple dexterity puzzles which required the removal of a ball from an object with an uncertain internal structure. A pictures of both puzzles is included.

Conclusion

I have 3-D printed puzzles dating to 1996 but I suspect I wasn’t the first person to utilize the technology in this way. 3D Systems, the company which invented the first stereolithography rapid prototyping system, was founded in 1986, a full decade before I did my work. Can anyone offer earlier puzzles than mine?