Solitaire Game/Puzzle With Fusion360

With the Toys and Games contest in mind I was mooching around in my workshop looking for inspiration, not only did I need a functional toy or game, but an idea where we could bring some different elements of Fusion360 into the design as well.

I had been given 2 wooden toilet seat lids(One was Solid Oak) and for some reason I had a lightbulb moment and thought of the Solitaire Game with Marbles.

Lets get the design sorted!

As always, use the correct Personal Protective Equipment for CNC operations

Eye protection:

Ear Protection:

Dust Mask (Rated for the work you are carrying ou:

14mm Marbles

Any wood you have to hand 15/20mm depth and enough to create a 200mm circle

CNC Machine

6mm Ball end router bit

Boiled Linseed Oil/Danish Oil or Varnish/Lacquer

We create a new component and then create a sketch and select the top plane, we then need to create a centre circle at 200mm and then extrude to 20mm which is the depth of the wood I'm going to be using, finish sketch.

We now need to make a recessed groove around the edge of the base, the groove is to accommodate the marbles during the game.

We now select the top of the extruded piece as our working surface, create another centre circle @ 174mm

Highlight the circle, we now select the Solid function and click on the Pipe tab, this in turn turns the circle line into a pipe which using the cut function creates our recess, I made the diameter of the pipe 11mm, a further fillet to the edges of the recess at 1mm smooths the edges of the recess.

Lets move on to creating the recesses for the marbles in the base.

We now need to create 33 recessed holes in the base to accommodate the marbles, to achieve this we can start by creating a vertical centre line and a horizontal centre line @ approx 150mm, on top of the vertical line i created an 11mm circle and space them out approx 20mm left and right we now have 3 circles at the top of the base.

We can now go into the Solid function and select Pattern then Rectangular pattern, highlight the 3 circles and start dragging them down, the default number will be 3, change this to 6 and drag down the base till they are uniform, we then use the same process and select the 3 mid point circles on the left and drag out creating 2 more copies, same on the right hand side.

We should now have 33 circles, we now need to recess the holes.

I had to get my thinking cap on here, I could have extruded the circles to say -1mm and then filleted but the marbles would still move, a concave recess would be so much better.

This next part of the design ended up being a bit of a chore and there is probably a better way but I am on a learning curve as well so here is how I did it.

Selecting the solid function, I clicked on the Sphere tab and then highlighted each centre circle and used the Sphere to cut the recess function, I did this for each individual circle another 32 times as it wouldn't let me do a rectangular pattern, once I got into a pattern it went seamlessly and the end result was 33 concave holes.

To finish the design I made a fillet around the edge, I will be using a 6mm ball end router bit for cnc operations and this will fillet the edge nicely, or you could always router the edges of the base.

Onto the cutting part of this Instructable.

As with all Fusion360 Manufacturing operations, we start off by creating a New Set Up, in the set up section we can highlight the body inside the stock, and we also change our zero position on the stock, I'm opting for the centre of the workpiece as the Zero starting point, we can then set size of the stock i:e relative box/Cylinder or fixed, we are selecting relative cylinder for this operation.

Because the ring around the base and holes for the marbles are concave I select the 3D Adaptive clearing as the first cut, select Bit size etc, and go through the tabs as in normal Fusion360 cutting operations.

For cutting out the piece we use the 2D contour option, remember to use tabs to hold the base in place after cutting.

I sanded the top of the base with 60 Grit pad on my sander, the wood was finished in a lacquer originally so i removed back to bare wood, also I routed around the bottom of the base.

All that's left to do is a coat of boiled linseed oil/danish oil or Varnish, I am opting for Boiled Linseed Oil on this occasion.

Unfortunately a crack appeared in the base during the cutting operation, i could fill with chippings and CA glue or leave as is, I suspect the toilet seat lid has seen a few cracks over the years so another wont hurt :)

If I was to make another one of these in the future I wouldn't opt for a concave hole for the marbles, with hindsight a normal pocket hole would suffice with a fillet and would knock a good hour off the cutting operation, same applies to the concave ring around the edge.

There you have it, upcycling at its best, from a toilet seat lid which would probably have been used as firewood or thrown in a skip to a very useable game.

As always I hope this Instructable has given you a few basic pointers with Fusion360 and see you in the next one.

As the name suggests, this is a game for one person.

How its played:

The game of Solitaire is most commonly played on a 33 point board (as pictured) in a cross shape with 32 pegs, marbles or pieces.

Preparation and Objective

The game is set up so that pieces fill every hole except the middle hole. The objective is to remove every piece except one, with the final piece ending up in the centre hole. Solitaire is played by one person and is therefore technically not a game at all, but a puzzle.

Basic Play The player makes successive capturing moves, removing a single piece each turn until is it impossible to make any more capturing moves, Each turn, the player captures a piece by jumping over that piece orthogonally (not diagonally) from one adjacent point to the vacant adjacent point on the other side.

Therefore, the first turn can be made only by jumping a piece into the middle hole from one of 4 possible points.

Advanced Play Once you have mastered the basic game, target a different hole as the hole that the final piece should finish in. You can also aim to get certain patterns of pieces left over.