Calibron Twelve Block Puzzle (Calibron 12)

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The Calibron Twelve Block Puzzle is an apparently simple bin-packing puzzle credited to Theodore Edison in 1933 and originally marketed by his company, Calibron. The goal is simply to arrange all the pieces so that they form a rectangle (hint: make a 56x56 unit square). However, difficulty of this puzzle is rated 5/5! There have been a lot of variants of this puzzle; in fact, there's one on Thingiverse as I write this -- but don't look at that because it shows the solution. My Calibron 12 was designed from scratch to take advantage of what 3D printers can do. The raised dimensions on each "block" are accurate in units of 2mm (with allowance for printing tolerance), so the puzzle fits in a 3D-printed box that is less than 3"x2"x1" -- but the pieces are big enough to handle easily. This was designed from scratch using OpenSCAD. However, the part dimensions are widely available. My primary reference for the dimensions was actually this code which claims to solve the puzzle. No, I'm not going to show you the solution... I haven't solved the puzzle myself (yet). This is also why I didn't pack the pieces optimally on the printer bed -- don't want any spoilers now, do we?

About the author:
ProfHankD
I'm a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Kentucky, best known for things like having built the world's first Linux PC cluster supercomputer in 1994... although around the 3D-printing world I'm probably best known for my HingeBox (which Tested popularized). My research group (Aggregate.Org) really is about improving computing systems by making the various SW+HW components work better together, which we do for many different types of computer systems: supercomputers, digital cameras, ... and now 3D printers. I had some experience with tool and die making using Bridgeport Series I CNCs as far back as the late 1970s, but my 3D printing adventure started in late 2012 with purchase of a MakerGear M2 for my lab to make custom camera parts in support of computational photography research. I now use multiple MakerGear M2 and Wanhao I3 3D printers, several semiconductor laser cutters, a 3040T CNC mill, a programmable paper cutter, and a small vacuum forming machine.

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