Puzzle auction and coming new puzzles

We have put three puzzles up for auction on eBay! Every puzzle starts from $1.00 AUD! As we have always done, we are going to donate half of the sales of this auction to the Animal Welfare League Queensland (AWLQ).

Please note that the puzzles we have put up for the auctions are all test version. Compared with the products we are selling at our shop, the material, durability, finishing and precision look to be at a disadvantage. When you bid, please make sure of the quality by looking at the picture on eBay.

Juno usually makes prototype or test version puzzles when or before we produce our regular products.
The test version of Grooved 6 Board Burr #2 was kept after we released its regular products because we didn't have many puzzles up for auction.
Its only but big difference to the regular one is the material. The test version is made of PNG Rosewood and is not durable compared to our original plywood that is used for the regular ones.

Juno has also made two test versions of Grooved 6 Board Burr #3 using solid timber of PNG Rosewood and Jarrah. Unlike our regular products, several grooves on the puzzle pieces were milled out manually by a small milling machine.

Well, as mentioned above, we have a new design of our Grooved 6 Board Burr series and its production is almost completed. The regular version of Grooved 6 Board Burr #3 is made of our original plywood of New Guinea Walnut and European Beech. Our new CNC router was used to produce the puzzle and the machine did very intensive work.

We are planning to release Grooved 6 Board Burr #3 and a sequential discovery puzzle box Slammed Car around mid-June.

The latter puzzle requires lots of steps, around 15 to 20 depending on how it is counted to access the internal cavity. Several hours of CNC work was necessary for each puzzle and it took a long time to produce the puzzle even though we have two CNC routers, and both were occasionally used at the same time.

We will notify our newsletter subscribers by email when the two new puzzles are available.

If you have not registered to our newsletter, please take a look at the following blog entry.

Pluredro Newsletter

Yukari

Our new toy

Most of our customers will know that we have been using a Chinese CNC router for our puzzle production. The machine is very reliable, does accurate work, and is a mandatory tool in our workshop. Many of our products could not have been made without the CNC router in a realistic working time frame.

Despite that, we had an inconvenience because the machine had a relatively smaller work area of 400 mm x 300 mm. In many cases, while we were producing a particular part, we didn't have enough area to cut the other parts in the remaining space of the working table.

Here we go, let's buy another larger machine!
We made up our mind last October and the new larger machine was delivered to our house at the end of last year. Although Juno had made sure that the machine was intact and it could be operated from one of his laptops on the day of delivery, there were many things that had to be done before the machine was used for puzzle production.

A CNC router requires a dedicated computer and it has to be set close to the CNC machine itself. The problem is the place sometimes becomes full of sawdust especially when Juno does rip saw cuts using a table saw. So, he decided to hide the dedicated computer in the cabinet of the CNC router, and then hooked up a computer monitor and a keyboard that comes with a pointing device. When these are not in use, the keyboard is folded down and is wrapped up with the special cover that I made.

The dust boot had to be made because Juno didn't like the size and the functions of commercially sold dust boots. Plumbing work for the duct collection was also necessary.

As you can see on the upper image, we have been producing cars although all the car manufacturing industries in Australia were closed down in 2017. The car is going to be one of our next puzzle products. Juno also has an idea of Grooved 6 Board Burr #3 and the puzzle is already in the production process. We sometimes have been using two of the CNC machines at the same time, worrying about the next electricity bill. Even with these efficient machines, the production takes time, so please wait patiently until we introduce the availability of the puzzles by our Pluredro newsletter.

Yukari

Grooved 6 Board Burr #2

This is our latest product Grooved 6 Board Burr #2 made of our original plywood of Bubinga and European Beech. The puzzle has very smooth surface and good texture thanks to the character of Bubinga timber.

Although the puzzle is quite difficult, Juno says that #2 is ten or 100 times easier than Grooved 6 Board Burr #1.  #1 has 4246 assemblies and #2 has only three. 4246 divided by three is 1415.33 but calculation for difficulty of puzzles may not work like this.

Juno already had vague ideas for different kinds of grooved board burrs when he designed #1. We now have #1 and #2, and Juno will try to design another variant of grooved board burrs when he has spare time.

We initially planned to start selling a sequential discovery puzzle at the same time with Grooved 6 Board Burr #2. Although we have spent quite a long time producing the sequential discovery puzzle, it is still a long way from being finished. It may take another couple of months to be completed, or even more. Please be patient until they are ready to be sold. We will notify you by the newsletter when the time comes.

Yukari