DIY Jigsaw Lamp

Hi, Today I'm going to teach you how to build a Jigsaw lamp, which is also known as the IQ lamp. In this tutorial, we are going to use simple materials readily found in your house.

Story of this project

When I was in Highschool we were asked to make something like this as our math project. And like any other teen in town, I was on the borderline of passing our math subject so I had to get remedial classes or some sort of way to pass. Even still it was really hard for me to get through but good thing I had a very talented teacher who knew that hands-on performance also played a big role in society. Back in my day, we had to manually cut the puzzle piece on a plastic folder and make the minimum of a 30 element lamp to get a passing grade and you get a higher grade as you use more elements to make the lamp. And Ironically speaking I almost failed my math project but good thing I had classmates who had cut extra pieces of the element so I was able to finish the lamp on time. A few years later here I am trying to make a huge comeback to show how I made this 120 element Jigsaw lamp with a bit of twist.

Special Greeting to my High school Math teacher who inspired me to make this project.

!CAUTION! This project requires patience and a bit of thinking during the actual build and assembly process so "PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE" sorry its A MUST! unless you have a laser engraver/cutter.

If you liked the video, feel free to subscribe to my upcoming YouTube channel and vote for me in the Light contest I will be making interesting videos such as electronics and drone-related projects as well as vlogs of the projects I make in school. The Youtube channel is being setup so stay tuned until I finalize the page Thank you.

The materials for this project is really simple, you can even substitute all of the materials that I used for this project

Electrical materials

Philipps 6W LED BULB "Classic Design"

I used this bulb so that it won't consume too much power and i'm only using it for some accent lighting in our living room/entertainment room. And using a high power bulb will only generate more heat which might possibly cause your puzzle pieces to burn.

Edison bulb 6W-25W

You might want to consider changing the material of your Puzzle element if you are going to use a fluorescent or incandescent Edison light bulb because those light bulbs produce a lot of heat which can burn your puzzle element in minutes. So better buy an LED Edison bulb.

Wire with bulb socket and switch.

I decided to just buy the whole all in one although I might need to add another switch because the switch is located beside the bulb socket wich will be hard to turn on or off when it's already hanging

Puzzle Element Material

I decided to go with specialty paper, at first I was planning to use plastic folder but I was not able to find any at our local office supply. Basically, any thin material will do except for your standard paper which is too think for this project.

Download the files below

There are multiple files and you can use it any method you would like to get yours made

.PDF is for the Manual cutting

.dxf is for laser cutting

.stl is for 3d printing

Remember that we will need to make 60 pieces of each color to make 120.

In my case I used a 2.5W laser engraver to cut the elements. Although you can say it's cheating it does not exactly do its job properly due to the time it takes to cut or should I say cut halfway through it, since it will need multiple passes to cut through a bit manual cutting after the laser.

But if you do have a high power laser cutter then good for you.

This puzzle element can also be 3D printed in ABS or TPU or flexible PLA or even nylon.

Although I did use a laser engraver I myself did cut these puzzle pieces 3 years ago so I can show you a trick on How I made it.

1. Use an Xacto blade/cutter - office cutters will not help be of much help when dealing with the curved cuts

2. Use a Stencil - It would be useful to make an Acrylic or wooden template and use that as a cutter stencil

3. Using scissors will be to much of a help unless you are using special ones or if you are comfortable with it.

4. Ask for help - It wont hurt to ask a friend or a guardian to help you cut the puzzle pieces. I mean heck yeah I passed my math project in high school thanks to my classmates

5. PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE and it will pay off

This is for those people who has a Chinese laser engraver and would love to use it for this project.

Before you start cutting be sure that you have the right speeds "feed rate" to properly cut the material you are going to use.

Once you make all the elements needed to complete the project you can go ahead figure out the puzzle on your own or continue reading my tutorial. And please bear with me because making a tutorial for a puzzle is not exactly easy as I too was figuring out the puzzle myself. It took me around an hour to complete the lamp included the trial and error along the assembly process.

Estimated build time : 1 Hour

Before proceeding make sure that you have a clean workspace because arranging the puzzle elements is a must as you progress through the build.

Know what is front and back.

This is basically the pattern to make this 120 element lamp

I have all the videos and picture for this tutorial but I guess it would be pointless to show if you don't get a very detailed instruction so here is the video that I followed while I was making mine. You can also look at my assembly process at 3:00 in my Video

*Do not fully close the lamp as you will need to insert the bulb and socket first. Go ahead and proceed two steps ahead for this*

I actually got lost int documenting the build process but I was able to record all of it in the video but not much on the pictures to give a very detailed instruction. But I do hope you are able to understand and solve the puzzle yourself.

Just like in video, before enclosing the jigsaw lamp you must first insert the bulb and connect it into the socket during the process.