More on Moiré

I previously wrote about my Moiré Maze puzzle as if it was finished, but it had all sorts of unfinished details until this weekend.  For example I didn't have suitable packaging until George Bell referred me to Clear Bags which supplied the attractive box pictured above.

I built this inexpensive plastic insert on the SD300 to hold the puzzle safely inside the box.

The closeup above emphasizes two more gripes:

• The Start and Finish are denoted by two bulb-shaped chambers, but there aren't any markings to identify which is which.  I suppose I could supply an instruction sheet, but it could get lost.
• It really needed some sort of mechanism or barrier to keep the chambers separate, to prevent the user from trivially moving the magnet from Start to Finish without tracing the maze.  The acrylic cutting pattern included an eyelet for attaching such a mechanism, but how should I use it?

 

To add markings to the puzzle, I used a KNK Zing plotter-engraver I had recently purchased.  The machine can't handle the bare acrylic pieces so I 3D-printed a template and taped it to a large piece of poster paper, which the machine happily accepted.

To calibrate the KNK Zing to the acrylic sheet, I aligned the the engraver's laser-pointer with a small hole in the 3D-printed template/holder.  And I installed a diamond-tipped engraving tool into the plotter.

Start and Finish are clearly identified after engraving.

And I installed a one-way vinyl flap that permits the magnet to be pulled from the Finish chamber to the Start chamber.  It doesn't let the magnet slide the other way.  The only way to travel from the Start to the Finish is to navigate the maze.