All of Geranium puzzles (mini geranium, pocket geranium, geranium and super geranium)

thingiverse

Recently I made my mini geranium puzzle. It is very fun to play. The only thing I do not like is it does not look as cool as original Very Puzzle's toys. I decided to make an acrylic frame. But since I also want to have whole series of Geranium puzzles I ordered laser cutting for all puzzles at once. Fortunately all puzzles use same moving pieces, so no need to design each one specifically. Here is the result for Mini Geranium and Pocket Geranium. I am still printing higher grade puzzles - Geranium and Super Geranium.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRKCBltuwPA&feature=youtu.be Result looks great. Though I have to admit that it feels much heavier than printed one. Moving is somewhat viscous, perhaps due to too smooth piece surfaces that tend to stick. I am working on solution. I will be glad to see your makes as well as comments on the design UPDATE 2016-07-26: I finally printed and assembled Geranium puzzle. This time I used slightly different moving parts design - pieces are hollow which reduces area of contact between pieces and frame. This should address viscous movement issue. I also increased some fillets radius so 'corner cutting' should be also improved. See STLs with 'FDM hollow' prefix. Though I have not played with Geranium yet as I stuck with Pocket Geranium solving. https://youtu.be/sA4hQ5P4jS4 As for Pocket Geranium. I improved pieces movement as well applying these 2 tricks: Sanded back side of the pieces with very rough sanding paper. Thus pieces do not stick to frame so much when using lubricant I reduced height of the pieces so that pieces are not too tighten between frame base and glass. As for pieces height. This seems to be very important for this puzzle that there is enough room for parts to move. I use frame made of 3mm+3mm acrylic glasses, but my parts are just 5.5mm including stickers. This seems to improve moving a lot. I updated all parts with slightly reduced height. Acrylic frame Each puzzle frame consists of 4 parts (from back to front) Base - solid part, made of 2-3mm thick non-transparent or semi-transparent acrylic Frame 1 - a frame with slightly bigger holes (to fit non-visible hooks of moving parts). Made of 3-4mm transparent acrylic Frame 2 - a frame with slightly smaller holes. made of 2-3mm semi-transparent acrylic. Glass - a part with holes for fingers. made of 2mm or thinner transparent acrylic. NOTE: Please note that attached pieces are designed for 3mm acrylic for Frame 1 and Frame 2. If you are using other thickness you'll have to re-export STLs from OnShape document. Please refer to 'How I designed this' section for more details. There are 2 ways to cut these parts. CNC-mill gives little smoother but matt surface. Laser cut surface is transparent but not super smooth. I used laser cut as it looks closer to original puzzle. Printed moving parts I designed 2 versions of moving parts: solid parts for FDM printers and hollow for DPL/SLS to save some plastic. I did not tried second option, so I rely on your feedback. I do not like supports when printing on FDM printer. Instead I split parts into front and back pieces, print them separately and then glue together. This gives much smoother front and back surface. Table below describe how many pieces you should print for each puzzle PuzzleType1Type2Type3Type4Type5Mini Geranium242659Pocket Geranium3534612Geranium5540615Super Geranium1015851630 Print Settings Printer Brand: RepRap Printer: Graber i3 Rafts: No Supports: No Resolution: 0.3mm nozzle, 0.2mm layer Infill: 20% Notes: Brim is not required for most of the parts. Though I used 1mm brim for Type1 and Type2 back sub-parts Post-Printing Sand printed parts Printed parts may require some treatment on side faces. For instance my parts are usually appear somewhat wider on first several layers, while side faces should be vertical. I used a knife to fix this. I also did some fillets on sharp corners. Finally I used sanding paper of 500 and 800 grade to polish faces. It is also a good idea to paint printed moving parts with a black spray paint. This makes black color more deep and better looking Assembly Use this assembly algorithm Take Frame base, Frame1 and Frame2 parts, put them on top of another. You may temporary fix them with a few screws - just do not tighten them as this is not the final assembly Place moving parts. One or two Type1/Type2 pieces should be the last as they can be easily inserted when other pieces are in place Apply stickers. Original ones work great Place glass part Screw everything together with M3 screws and nuts This is up to you which screws and nuts to use. I do not like original ones (regular screw and cup nut) as they are not flat enough. But I can't offer anything instead. My current idea is to use long M3 nuts, put in the middle layers of the puzzle, and screw them with M3x5 screws from both sides. How I Designed This Onshape Recently I discovered http://onshape.com. This is free but fully featured CAD software right in your browser!!! You definitely must try it if you have not already. Just watch couple tutorial videos to jump in. Despite I already had my Mini Geranium designed in Solidworks, I redesigned this in Onshape so now everyone has the ability use this document. Here it is: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/882e8429e4360e5cd42df5c7/w/3617660f31078afd5051da13/e/785917d2592d0ea21e6f590b Just make a copy and you can do your tweaks. There are several tabs in the document, names should be self explanatory. Depending on thickness of acrylic sheets you have you may want to tweak moving parts. This is easy, you just need to change few variables: L1Thickness and L2Thickness - thickness of acrylic sheets you are using for Frame and Frame2 ZClearance, L1SideClearance and L2SideClearance - clearance between moving parts and frame VisibleDiameter and InvisibleDiameter - main diameters (original puzzles use 70 and 77 mm respectively) When you are all set with your tweaks, just export STLs and print them as usual