Prototype

So I've been playing with mazes lately and I decided to make a "desktop toy". This is a 4 level torus maze. Right now the model is about 36 inches in diameter. However, scale is not the issue right now. I can always change that. What I'm wondering is the best material to print it in. I want the size to accommodate something the size of a bee-bee. Say a .177 caliber... Anyway, I was thinking about the frosted plastics. I'm also wondering about construction. Should it (or can it) be printed all in one piece? Or should I make an assembly?

All input will be gratefully accepted...

Here's a screen of the prototype....

Produced as a single piece in FUD may not be a nice as separate elements latter bonded together and that is because the support material will cause a different finish, sandable yes (if you can reach), paintable yes but with a slightly textured and less transparent, sometime completely opaque areas. As elements the parts should print beautifully as they do not seem to require support structures for print, technically no undercuts.

I would modify the columns with bonding (or snap fit) in mind, more contact area and perhaps even a keyway like feature, a partial tongue and groove to make assembly easy. Or you could even design them to allow the small sphere to traverse to the next level.

Don't rule out the new Black High Def Acrylate, it should be a bit cheaper than FUD or FXD and is much easier to see the part in shiny black than translucent FUD.

If you can design for the laser sintered plastics, AKA Strong White Flexible (polished and unpolished with many color options) the price will come down even more. While that material does not have any support material issues it is a bit coarse. Finally look at both fully assembled models VS printed elements in the 3D tools, you can observe machine space cost VS more practical flats in weighing your decisions. If the idea is to sell a finished product here, requiring only a bee bee to complete then the extra cost may be worth it. Good luck! -Shea

If you design it as separate stackable pieces, you could make it at scalable puzzle.
The columns could be separate and everything could link together using pegs, or the columns themselves.
That way you could swap levels around or insert new ones over time.
The attached picture should explain what I mean a bit better.


People could order separate "levels" to mix and match the sort of puzzle they want.

Or...


To fit with the style of your existing design.

Much food for thought.... Thank you.
When I first started this idea, I could pretty much see that it would probably require separate pieces that would require assembly. I was also thinking about a clear plastic tube of some kind, to set each level in. That way you could pick the whole thing up, tilt it and rotate it. The problem there is, finding the tubing, which would have to be "sold separately". I think printing something like that would be counter productive...
Anyway. Thank you for the input. I'm heading "back to the drawing board"....

Thanks for the input. I actually had something similar in mind... Just a matter of a little more R&D...

No problem.

With a design like this you wouldn't necessarily need clear tubing. As the ball would be held in place by the maze.
A person would feel more "involved" with the puzzle, without the tubing.

But it's your idea and vision of what you want.

Happy designing!

Just thought...if you took one of the levels and scaled it so the paths in the maze could act as a multi-piece Dungeons & Dragons terrain...I imagine that'd be awesome for a Minotaur style campaign.

Question... "multi-piece Dungeons & Dragons terrain" ?? I have NO idea what your talking about. Explain?

Sorry, I have a tendency to compress my ideas into short sentences. And miss out the finer details, like context
The Dungeons & Dragons tabletop roleplaying game usually uses a grid layout for movement of the characters in the game. (Sorry if I'm telling you something you already know, I'm just covering all the angles)
Here's a picture of what I mean. Please excuse the crummy maze and possible spelling mistakes. And the colours used.

Okay. That make sense. I never got into the whole "D&D thing, so I didn't understand the reference.
As for splitting the maze into pieces.... That would seem to me to be a logistical nightmare. Besides which, I just got done doing a "scaling" study, and for the maze to accommodate a standard .177 caliber BB, the outside diameter of the maze would need to be almost 13 inches! WAY too big to print. I suppose I could use a smaller ball. Ball bearings are easy to find online and come in all sorts of different sizes...
Soooo Back to the drawing board....

Whoa, that would be a big maze. Yeah, you can get some pretty small bearings these days.
Well, I'll leave you to it.

This is the joy of designing...finding solutions to the problems presented

Please ignore this post. I placed it in the wrong thread....

I tried pulling an svg based maze from that site into Tinkercad but sadly I'm getting errors. Something is giving Tinkercad heartburn about the format, I guess. Are there different types of svg formats or older/newer formats? Maybe a way to clean it up? The image does open up in a browser window so it must be something quirky in Tinkercad.