Puzzle Boxes

A new and unique plastic artform that combines 3D geometry, engineering, and artisan crafting. 

Little presents/ornaments around the bottom 14 pieces of a 120-piece Christmas Tree Box.  Each present is made out of 6 wooden pieces, 2 of each of the 3 pieces shown at the bottom right.  See: Christmas 2022 for more pictures of all the gifts that I made over the holidays. 
A 12-piece clear lucite Relativity Box looking through a sunset.
The inside of a 36-sided “Pyrabox.” The pieces are individually numbered with labels serving as assembly instructions.
A 108-sided wooden box that approximates the shape of a sphere, with labels on the outside to demonstrate the software and assembly. See: Sphere Box for more info/pictures.

Boxes

Models of a Relativity Box, Sphere Box, Pyrabox, and Christmas Tree Box.

Relativity Box – A 12-piece design consisting of 2 overlapping cubes. I also used an alternate, 20-piece, 2-part design with an optional 8-piece lip.

Sphere Box – A 108-piece design that approximates the shape of a sphere.

Christmas Tree Box – A 120-piece, 3-part Christmas Tree design.

Pyrabox – A 36-piece pyramid shaped design.

Christmas 2022 Decorations Various Christmas themed boxes.

Creating a Puzzle Box / The Software

See: Puzzle Boxes: The Software for a detailed description of the software and its features.

The software I wrote for this project is a design tool for making boxes using Computer Numeric Control (CNC) cutting machines.  As input, it takes industry standard AutoCAD drawings, and as output it produces files that can be used to precision cut wood, plastics, and other materials for the creation of physical boxes.  The sides of the boxes fit together like the pieces of a puzzle using finger joints, an assembly process common to woodworking. 

Making Box Designs from Shapes

The first step in this process is to convert 3D models of arbitrary shapes (called bounding volumes) into box designs, which are assemblies of rectangular prisms.  Below are examples of box designs created by the program using a sphere as a bounding volume.

Left: A 6x6x6 unit box design that fits inside an 8 unit diameter sphere. Right: The Sphere Box design, an 8x8x8 unit box that approximates the shape of a sphere.

The software can create box designs from more complex bounding volumes with options that control the size, shape and number of sides of the resulting designs:

Left: A 173 sided box design that fits inside of a tubular question mark. Right: An 1100 sided box design that fits over the same tubular question mark.

In addition to box designs automatically created from a bounding volume, the software also supports box designs manually created in AutoCAD (e.g. the Relativity Box) and combination designs that were generated by the software and then manually edited (e.g. the Christmas Tree Box).  

Finger Joints

The software can then read the AutoCAD model and extrude the 2D faces into into 3D pieces of one or more material thicknesses.  The next step of the process is to create finger joints so that the sides of the box will fit together.  Depending on whether they are on an inside or outside edge, these fingers can either add or remove material to individual pieces.

Without fingers, the extruded pieces of the sphere box overlap on outside edges and leave a gap on inside edges.
With fingers drawn correctly, the pieces of the sphere box fit together with no overlaps or gaps.

Making Boxes

Once finger joints are drawn, the program can then output instructions for a CNC machine to cut out the pieces from a sheet of material.  Because these boxes can be complex, consisting of a hundred or more individual pieces, this software outputs numbers and labels for each piece, including piece numbers for each adjacent side that serve as assembly instructions.

Freshly cut Christmas Tree Box pieces.

The pieces can then be decorated and assembled into a physical box. 

The two parts of a Christmas Tree Box, assembled from 120 pieces and painted 11 colors.  The top part fits over a 12 piece, 2.5 inch lip glued inside the bottom part. 

Gallery