The online generator that will leave you a-mazed

by Nikolett Sulyok

Probably everybody at least once in their lives had the chance to try solving mazes or labyrinth based games, using one of the printed formats or have actually visited a real life hedge maze. If you had the opportunity, you most likely have played with one of those boards with a ball being trapped in them as well, and quickly realised how tricky gravity can get!

Aaron Rodriguez developed an incredible online generator that lets you prepare your own mazes. The options are so numerous that we decided to only showcase one way of using it in this article. If you decided to experiment, show your makes to us via Instagram!

Let's take a look at the basic settings!

 

 

 Every option has an explanation next to their input fields, which is truly helpful as there are a plethora of settings to play with. If you are using Lightburn with your machine set up within the software, you do not have to worry about the "Printer configuration" settings on the right side panel.

In this article we will not cover the "Calibration Rectangle Configuration", because it is intended for simulation, and even without adjusting anything within those settings we got a truly awesome result that we are going to show in the coming pictures. Once again, the Lightburn Software makes it so much more convenient to do such operations too.

To generate your files, first click "Export SVG Blueprint" to enable the "Download" button.

If you click on the "?" at the print mode options, you get to see how each mode will look like. The Single sheet mode is what we are going to cover.  We do recommend that you try out the Floor and Wall mode as well,  that is, if you have the patience for the pieces!

A generated layout of the Floor and Wall maze will look like this: 


A layout that you generate with the Single Sheet settings will look like so: 

We love engraving stuff! Because of that, we worked together with @Nekolett to feature one of her artworks on this maze as a demonstration.

There is a couple of things we recommend you do before you go ahead and laser cut your new maze game!

1) Measuring the materials

If you are doing the Single Sheet maze, we suggest you pick a thicker material that is ideally taller than the ball you will use for your maze. You can also just stack materials together by cutting multiple copies. Remember: measure twice, cut once! Measure your materials and the ball, then adjust the maze generator settings according to what you have available. Same goes to the Floor and Wall mode: there it is especially important that you get the wall thickness correct, for the pieces fitting together and to let the ball pass through properly.

2). Making the cutting job simplified

In Single Sheet mode, we welded together the walls of the maze (the black coloured zone) using a handy Tool in Lightburn Software. See the screenshots for instructions:
 

Firstly, you want to UNGROUP the lines by selecting the black coloured zone. This will then unlock the "Weld Shapes" option in the Tools menu. You can also just press CTRL+W (or Command+W on a Mac) to perform the same action.

This way, you have a clearer overview of the lines, and it will be much less time and power consumed by the machine to make your maze, for the same outcome. 

Now, let's get to cutting! We cut the walls first.

 

 

And then, before cutting the back piece board, engrave your graphic on it if you like! You can design something so it shows up well between the maze walls, or you can just engrave the backside, like we did.


We hope that you enjoyed this article, and we are looking forward to see what you will make!

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