Fancy a home-made jigsaw for Father's Day?

When you have a laser cutter, the possibilities of excellent home-made gifts are near limitless. As Father's Day is approaching on the 20th of June, perhaps consider preparing something for the occasion!?

In this article, we are going to show you how to make your own jigsaw puzzles using a simple online generator, how to add an artwork for engraving in Lightburn Software and how to adjust this picture's brightness and make other adjustments if desired.

 

The author of this tool is Manuel Kasten, and the Github source for the generator can be found right here.

But how does it work?! Let's jump in!

As soon as we enter the webpage for the Jigsaw Puzzle Generator, we can click on either of the two options shown above to then go into the customisation page of the specific kind of puzzle. Since in our example work piece we went with a round format, we will go through the settings for that one!

You can adjust the randomness of the pieces by adjusting the "Seed" option. "Tab size" will change the size of connecting bits, while "Jitter" will deform the pieces to be more or less rugged on their edges. "Diameter" defines the outer size of the jigsaw game, and "Rings" will determine how many "rows" there will be. 

If you want your puzzle to be hexagonal shape and without a smooth curved outline, turn off the ticked options under the adjustable settings.

Once you are satisfied with the preview, hit "Download .SVG".

 

Import your .SVG file into Lightburn software, as well as your image or photo that you would like to be engraved on the work piece. Here, we used a .PNG that had a circle shape so it fit within the round outline just perfect.

If you Right Click on the picture you inserted, and hit "Adjust image", you can choose which Image Mode output you would like to get once the laser starts engraving it. There are several super cool options to choose from, here we chose "Halftone"!

And here we go!

 

At the end the pieces, while handling them, might leave your fingers a little bit dark - the burnt wood from the laser beam will stay on the pieces after the process. If you are using wood as the working material, we suggest you use a light varnish spray over the pieces, this will seal the surface and will not leave your hands dusty from touching them. You could wipe them also carefully with a wet cloth.

 

Tag us on Instagram at @smoke_and_pictures with your makes so we can check them out! 

We hope that you enjoyed this tutorial, and wish you happy creating!