Free Agamograph Generator

Three pictures in one piece of kinetic art: one from the left, one from the right, one head-on. Laser engraved and cut, nothing to print or glue. No signup.

About the Agamograph Generator

Upload three pictures and the tool builds the piece: a board engraved with the front picture, and a set of thin strips engraved with the left picture on one face and the right picture on the other. The strips have teeth that push into slots cut in the board. Walk past it and the picture changes three times. The 3D view on the canvas shows the finished piece from every angle before you cut anything; switch to the three sheets when you are ready to download.

Made for first-time makers. Every earlier way of making an agamograph needed careful hand alignment between a printed picture and a cut. Here every engrave and every cut lives in the same laser file, and the one time the material has to turn over, the laser has already cut it the jig to land in.

What you need

One sheet of 3 mm (1/8 in) plywood, or 2 mm for the Fine Detail preset, and a laser that can engrave pictures and cut through it. The Standard preset's strip sheet is about 240 × 130 mm, so it fits an entry-level 300 × 200 mm bed with room to spare.

How to build it

1. Download the three files. 1 Board, 2 Strips side A, 3 Strips side B. Each file has red cut lines and one blue engrave image. In your laser software, set blue to engrave and red to cut, and make sure the engrave runs before the cut in every job.
2. Run file 1 on the board sheet. It engraves the front picture, then cuts the slots and the outline in one job. Take the board off the bed and set it aside.
3. Tape a second sheet down and run file 2. Tape all four corners, because this sheet stays on the bed for two jobs. The file engraves side A and cuts the outline of the strip blank. Leave the scrap frame around it exactly where it is.
4. Turn the blank over inside its own hole. Lift out the blank, turn it over like a page (the left edge goes to the right), and set it back into the hole it came from. The hole is your jig. The top edge must stay at the top: a blank turned head over heels also fits the hole, but it puts the pictures in the wrong order.
5. Run file 3 without moving anything. Do not move the sheet or change the job origin. It engraves side B, then cuts the strips and their teeth. Because this job does the cutting, every strip is exact to side B. A small flip error only shifts the cut through side A, which is engraved 1 mm wider than the strip on each side for this reason.
6. Move the strips onto the board, right to left. The strips are now loose in the sheet, so pick them off the bed one at a time, starting from the right end, and press each one into the next empty slot on the board, starting from the left. The rightmost strip on the bed goes into the leftmost slot. Hold each strip with its picture upright and facing you, then turn it a quarter turn so the teeth point at the board. Done that way, the left picture faces left and the right picture faces right on its own.
7. Check, then press home. Set every strip in loosely first. Look from the left, then from the right: each picture should read like a photo. If one looks scrambled, two strips are swapped or one is turned around. Then press each strip down until both teeth are fully in the slots. They are a press fit, so there is no glue.

Who Is This For?

Art teachers, STEAM educators, library makerspaces, and anyone who wants a gift that does something when you walk past it. The DesignerBee crew loads as a sample so you can cut one straight away, then swap in your own three pictures.

Frequently Asked Questions