Website on gears in twisty puzzles

RubixFreakGreg · **Posted:** Mon Jan 02, 2012 1:26 pm

Hey everyone,

I had to do some website for class so I decided to make it on cubes, so...

here it is !

There might be a few mistakes (history-wise) but I'm appraoching the deadline so I can't correct them ^^

Enjoy!

Greg

Timur · **Posted:** Tue Jan 03, 2012 5:54 am

You say that the middle layer must be thin enough to allow presense of gears. Actually it's has nothing to do with thickness (gear layer can be very thick and thus have big gears). The rule is that if a gear from the stationary (middle) layer is in gearing contact with one of the moving layers, at the other side it must have gearing contact with other layer that turns in opposite direction as well.

RubixFreakGreg · **Posted:** Tue Jan 03, 2012 6:40 am

My teachers don't know that ^^ I'll correct it after I get my grade, thanks for the correction Timur

Pete the Geek · **Posted:** Tue Jan 03, 2012 10:32 pm

It's an interesting website. I enjoyed it and learned quite a lot about these types of puzzles... and that was *before* I noticed you have an option to view it in English! :mrgreen:

Good luck with your studies.

DLitwin · **Posted:** Tue Jan 03, 2012 11:44 pm

Very nice, and bilingual as well

Dave

P.S. I should mention that the Slice Kilominx has no gears. It's opposing faces do not turn relative to each other. A better way of thinking about it is that the slice turns while the rest of the puzzle stays still.

Oskar · **Joined:** Mon Nov 30, 2009 1:03 pm

Greg,

Great write-up!

I believe you missed the Flatland Gears by Doug Engel. Doug's work is from 2007 and it pre-dates all the other geared twisty puzzles.

Also some small historical facts. It was indeed Bram Cohen who first came up with the idea of using gears in 3D twisty puzzles. Attached below is his very first email in which he explained his concept to me. His email led to the development of Bram's Cube, which I designed on 19 April 2009. However, my first design attempt was the Geary Cube, see the sketch below from 16 December 2008. And the very first geared prototype was made by George Miller on 31 March 2009, see the photo below. That puzzle is now for sale as the Geary Cube.

Enjoy!

Oskar

Bram's email:

Quote:

From: Bram Cohen
Sent: Saturday, August 16, 2008 9:14 PM
To: Oskar van Deventer
Cc: George Miller
Subject: Staples

Hey Oskar, there's a mechanism concept of mine which for some reason I haven't described to you before, and which you may be interested in.

Say that you have two pieces which slide against each other, either in a straight line or a circular motion. Between the two pieces you can have another piece which is held to sliding along that path using grooves in either side. My neat idea is this: in that piece, which I'll call the staple, there's a gear which meshes into teeth on either side of it, sort of a double rack and pinion system. This forces the staple to move at exactly half the rate relative to the other pieces as they move relative to each other.

What makes staples useful for making mechanisms is that the grooves in either side can dovetail, so that the staple actually holds the pieces on either side in place. For example, a 2x2x2 cube can be made by connecting each edge with two staples. That way when the outer 2x2x2 moves a quarter turn, the eight staples on the slice plane each advance by an eight rotation, which brings them to the position of the next staple.

That 2x2x2 mechanism can be shown off by making a sort of mega-void cube. Have the corner pieces have gaps between them only bridged by staples, and rely exclusively on the staples to hold everything together. To make that work the staples need two gears on them instead of one, to avoid any positions where a staple doesn't have a gear which is meshed on both sides. It would also be nice to color the staples themselves, so that getting them in the right position would be part of the puzzle. That would make the puzzle as a whole extraordinarily difficult in addition to being mechanically fascinating.

Very first sketch:

Attachment:

Geary Cube.jpg [ 91.82 KiB | Viewed 928 times ]

Very first prototype:

Attachment:

Geary Cube prototype.jpg [ 27.77 KiB | Viewed 928 times ]

RubixFreakGreg · **Posted:** Wed Jan 04, 2012 8:06 am

I will have to update all this after my finals, because I'm getting more and more work to do at the moment.
Thanks for all the additionnal info ! I forgot a lot of those. I don't know if it's possible but if there's an open source option for people to edit along, I'd be glad to put it, I'll just hae to check this when I get back home.

Darren Grewe · **Posted:** Thu Jan 05, 2012 8:24 pm

That would look like a great article for twistypuzzles.com? I was wondering do we have enough puzzles to make a Gear section for the museum? Gears puzzle maker no offense take I hope but I always do like a middle gear in the center of each face because I'd think that it would look cooler to anyway like the one above.

Andreas Nortmann · **Posted:** Fri Jan 06, 2012 10:08 am

Darren Grewe wrote:

I was wondering do we have enough puzzles to make a Gear section for the museum?

Currently there is the mechanism-entry "Gears":
http://twistypuzzles.com/cgi-bin/pdb-se ... ec&key=107
which contains 25 entries.

Darren Grewe · **Posted:** Sat Jan 07, 2012 12:59 am

Andreas Nortmann wrote:

Darren Grewe wrote:

I was wondering do we have enough puzzles to make a Gear section for the museum?

Currently there is the mechanism-entry "Gears":
http://twistypuzzles.com/cgi-bin/pdb-se ... ec&key=107
which contains 25 entries.

Thanks I must forgot about that one.

Website on gears in twisty puzzles

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