Rosebud for dummies

Description

This is a rare puzzle by Stewart Coffin, his design #39. He invented this puzzle in 1983 and made it in wood, since then this puzzle become famous for two things. First, for the difficulty of making it accurately in wood, and second for the difficulty of assembly. Because of the first difficulty wood copies are rare and highly valued. I have a wood copy (shown in the photos) made by Scott Peterson and the accuracy of this puzzle is phenomenal. Ironically, it seems the more accurately this puzzle is made, the harder it is to put together. People had such difficulty assembling the Stewart Coffin original that he started making a jig for putting it together (shown in my photos). This is the most difficult coordinate motion puzzle that I know of. There are two ways to 3D print this puzzle. First, the complete pieces are easily printed with no support, but then you will have to figure out the assembly. Good luck with that! This is the construction method used in the Thingiverse design https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1597723 The approach taken here is to print each piece in three parts which snap together. You can then assemble the puzzle by snapping the pieces together. If you like you can then glue the parts together, but then you will be forced to do the coordinate motion assembly. Honestly, though, I do not enjoy assembling my wood puzzle even using my jig. It is a matter of precise alignment which I find aggravating. It is possible to assemble the 3D printed version by unsnapping and then snapping together only three joints, exactly how to do this is a puzzle in itself (no coordinate motion is required). Thus, if you like, you could glue all but three joints. In the photos you will see the alternate "Pinwheel" assembly. This assembly is much easier than the original configuration and you will not need to take the pieces apart. This puzzle was created using Aaron Siegel's excellent PuzzleCAD software. I include the openSCAD file in case you want to change the scale or anything else. The current version has been scaled to match my wood version, and the assembled puzzle should not be tight. If your PLA is brittle, the snap joints may break with repeated use. I recommend you use your strongest PLA (or PETG or ABS). My copy is made from eSun PLA+ (red, purple, yellow).

Statistics

Category

Tags