Chipboard Cardboard Constructors are laser-cut chipboard tile shapes with slots that allow for friction fitting. Fitting different shapes together can generate tactile 3D shapes quite quickly and I've found kindergarten students are able to manipulate them quite easily.
There are a few ready-made design files floating around the intertubes but most are made for corrugated cardboard. While corrugated cardboard is a wonderful material it's not plentiful enough for me to create hundreds of tiles in different shapes. I like to use chipboard which we get quite cheaply in bulk in large sheets.
Rather than modifying existing files I figured it would be easier to draw my own files. I went for a rectangle, triangle and circle and went for the simple angles at corners and mids. Skewer-sized holes allow for axles, spinners, poles, etc.
Here are the files, they're licensed as NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International so feel free to modify, change and share alike but do not use my files to make money. They are sized for 0.02" chipboard, on a 12"x18" artboard, so be careful resizing if you have different sizes since slot sizes may not fit.
I wanted to practice optimizing files for the laser cutter so I was trying to find shortcuts to eliminate overlapping lines or to speed up travel times. I didn't get very far and just deleted overlapping paths manually. It's very soothing to see sides of shapes line up so the laser cutter just has to make one cut for two different shapes.
