Roxanne's Videos, addendum

In response to my last post, Roxanne graciously posted a new video honoring the Rox Box puzzle box I made for her last year, and which I discussed in an earlier post.

Just to clear up a little confusion, I engraved the gemstones but I didn't actually build them.  These were lab-grown gemstones, technically real rubies and sapphires but not natural rubies and sapphires.  Gem Select has a nice, balanced explanation of synthetic gem stones here if you're curious.  It's informative and respectful, but they don't trade in synthetic gems so they aren't pushing a product.

The clear plastic 'windows' in the Rox Box were literally 3D printed already-assembled by building the majority of the puzzle using white material, then switching to transparent material for the last few millimeters.  This is how the model looked when it came out of the printer, embedded in a solid block of white material with a few layers of clear material (at right).

After I cleared the material from the inside of the models I could see through the windows, but the parts were still embedded in unused support material from the build process.

Peeling away the material around the exteriors revealed the finsihed Rox Box parts, complete with their transparent windows for the top and bottom.  This is how the puzzle box looked the first time I got to see it!

Rox shares the Rox Box with Uwe Mèffert

In August I built a gem-filled puzzle for a widely-known puzzle collector, Roxanne, and named it the Rox Box in her honor. It featured two puzzle-engraved gem stones locked behind clear windows, and the box could only be opened by navigating the lid through a maze in the shape of the word "Rox," Roxanne's nickname. I built only one, so she owns a very exclusive specimen.


Recently Roxanne met Uwe Mèffert over dinner in Hong Kong. Mèffert invented the Pyraminx puzzle, which was popular back in the Rubik's Cube puzzle craze in the 1980s. He still develops and sells puzzles at his web store www.mefferts.com

Roxanne showed him her Rox Box puzzle and kindly sent me a picture of Mèffert playing with it. He praised the way it incorporated her name right into the puzzle!


Mèffert showed some of the puzzles he's developing for his store, and Roxanne shared many of the favorites in her own collection. I'm very flattered she included the Rox Box because I interpret her choice as a sincere expression of appreciation. I'm grateful for that!

Rox Box: Clear and opaque in the same parts

I built this puzzle box for a collector named Roxanne, and incorporated her nickname "Rox" into the puzzle itself. The box holds the gemstones using the gem holders I built earlier, so I called it the "Rox Box."


The gem holders slide into a plastic insert, which corkscrews into the middle of the puzzle box. Rox's nickname is carved into the walls, which creates a maze the lid has to be threaded through to open the box. This premise was inspired by Teifenbacher's A-Mazing Box at Thingiverse.


It's 3D printed with a combination of opaque materials and clear material to form windows, so the gems are visible when the box is closed. A ruby is visible through the top, engraved with a Rubik's Cube.


A sapphire is visible through the bottom of the box.


To build opaque parts with clear windows I switched between transparent and opaque material while the SD300 was building, which resulted in a seamless transition between the two. Thus the clear windows are integral, rather than being assembled separately.


This was my first attempt to combine two materials, and it worked perfectly on my first try! In this instance I simply arranged the parts so the window would be built first, and started building with clear material. When it had built to a height of 2mm (the thickness of the windows) I selected "Unfeed media" on the front panel, swapped-in the opaque white material, and let it continue building.