Puzzle piece issue

puzzle pieces aren’t fitting, every second piece is slightly larger then it should be and the tabs don’t fit into the sockets even though they fit perfectly in artcam, the sockets are a different shape to the tabs they aren’t in artcam, am cutting all on the outside with a 1.5mm endmill. I’m kinda at a loss as to why.

I ran into the same issue when I was making a puzzle. The solution is to use a small end mill (.0625 inch works well) and to be positive all your cuts are done on the outside of the lines.

Here is my original post and discussion about making puzzles

What software are you using?

0.625 is actually slightly bigger then the 1.5mm bit i was using, have gone over toolpaths and all are def set to outside carve and pieces are all carved separately

be sure to measure your bit. i had a similar issue and found that to be a contributing factor. I also made the mistake of offsetting my curves and not checking the radius to be sure it was greater than the bit so it would fit.

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The other thing you should do is do a test cut. Draw a line then measure the kerf, or slot, of the bit you are using and use that as your bit size.

This will take into account your run out.

Hope this helps

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have tried all suggestions but still no luck, bloody thing is doing my head in trying to figure it out

are your steppers calibrated? if not, go here and look over relative post
post 13 in particular I list the 3 things I did to get going and in fact, I was working also on a puzzle. hope this helps.

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I don’t think I have the head at the moment to calculate that

Just get a scrap piece of wood and cut a 3 inch square and a 2 inch diameter circle (just make shallow .05 inch depth cuts on the outline (set the cut to be outside the line)

Then just measure the distance between the side on the square and see if they are 3 inches. Then check the diameter of the test circle. If they are the correct size then your calibration is good.

Finally figure it out, offset the vectors of both pieces by .2mm inwards, keeping the pieces the same size except for the sockets which enlarged and the tabs which shrunk, shape is still a little off but mostly it seem to fix it self somewhere a long the multiple tests.

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Glad it worked finally worked for you, but you really should not need any offset. It sounds like the diameter of your bit is off by .1mm. Did you ever measure it?

yeah but only with a tape measure, i have some calipers around somewhere I’ll have to dig them out