How to Create a Missing Puzzle Piece with the xTool M2 Print and Cut Machine

There is nothing more aggravating than spending weeks on a brand new puzzle and finding out that you are missing a piece.

What do you do with it at that point? You know that you’ll never want to do that puzzle again and donating it would just be wrong.

Well, if you have an xTool m2 print and cut machine, you can easily print and cut your own custom puzzle piece and make your sad puzzle whole again!

I was so excited that this worked out and honestly if you didn’t tell me that there was one piece that was slightly different from the rest, I wouldn’t even notice. It came out SO GOOD!

Let me walk you through how to create your own missing puzzle piece.

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Materials

Tools

Step 1 – Measure Your Puzzle Thickness

Not all puzzles are created equal. You’ll want to measure your puzzle thickness before you purchase your heavy duty white cardboard.

Use calipers to measure your puzzle thickness. Mine was 1.5mm thick.

Step 2 – Trace Your Puzzle Piece

Remove the surrounding puzzle pieces so that you can outline your puzzle piece shape. I taped the portion of the puzzle that I removed directly to the cardboard and then traced the puzzle with a fine point pen.

Step 3 – Upload Traced Puzzle Piece to Your Computer

I used my cellphone to take a picture of the traced puzzle piece and then uploaded it into xTool Studio.

Once the image is uploaded, you can just click on the image and use the Trace feature within the software to trace your design.

It traced both the outside and inside of the pen line. I only needed the outside so to remove the inside line, I right clicked on my mouse, selected “release compound vector” and then clicked on the inner line and deleted it.

Step 4 – Scale the Puzzle Piece

Now you’ll need to scale your puzzle piece perfectly so that it fits. First, delete the image that you uploaded.

Make sure that your cardboard with the puzzle shape that you traced with a pen is taped down to the floor of the M2.

Then select the computer traced puzzle shape and align it over the pen traced puzzle shape. You can see below that I scaled the shape and then aligned it perfectly with the drawn piece to confirm that the shape was perfect.

Step 5 – Upload a Picture of the Puzzle Image

Lay the surrounding puzzle pieces on the cardboard sheet.

Identify what part of your puzzle image is missing and then take a close up picture of that portion with enough image around the missing piece to allow you to properly align the image.

If you have a printout reference that would be best for the picture but in my case the picture was only on the box. It still worked out just fine.

Use the upload image feature in xTool Studio to bring the image into the software.

Next you’ll want to reduce the opacity in the adjustment options to lighten the image enough and allow you to line it up perfectly with the surrounding puzzle pieces.

The missing puzzle piece for me was mostly grass but there was a little white flower in the bottom right that helped me to scale and align the image perfectly over the puzzle pieces.

Step 6 – Align Puzzle Shape Over Image

Now you’ll just need to pull over your puzzle vector shape and align it perfectly with the missing section of the puzzle.

Before you print your image be sure to take the opacity back to 100%!

Step 7 – Print and Cut the Puzzle Piece

Within the software select Print then Cut for the “Mode”.

For the material I went with A4 colored cardboard in light yellow since there wasn’t a white available.

For the image I used 100% for the print setting.

For the vector file I set that to cut and used 100% power and 15 mm/s speed with two passes. I tested many other options and this was the best for the material that I used.

Remove the surrounding puzzle pieces from the cardboard sheet before you print and cut.

Once the settings are all in place you can process the file and let the M2 do its thing!

The machine will start with the printer module and print the image. Then you’ll have to open the machine and replace the module to the laser to cut the piece.

Below is a picture of the cardboard after it had printed the image and before I installed the laser module. At the top I made a mistake with the image and forgot to take the opacity back to 100%. Oops.

And here is the cardboard after the laser cut the puzzle piece.

Step 8 – Apply a Clear Coat

I chose to spray on a clear coat to match the sheen of the puzzle and protect the printed piece over time.

Once the clear coat has dried you’re all set to complete your puzzle. Just pop that custom puzzle piece into place!

You can barely tell that it wasn’t part of the original puzzle.

And here is the whole puzzle with the custom piece that I made with my xTool M2 Print and Cut Machine.

I had a lot of fun figuring this out and I’m glad that I documented it for future puzzles. I know that I have at least one Christmas puzzle that’s missing a piece so I’ll be using this method again!

I hope that you found this helpful. If you replace puzzle pieces using your M2 please send me pictures. It would make my day!

Also, I recently posted a detailed review of the xTool M2. Check that out if you’re curious about how it performs with different material types.