Hi Twisty Puzzles fans,

Maltese Gears was suggested by Bram Cohen. It combines properties op Geared Mixup and Void Cube. The first prototype worked much better than expected. The little gears cause a little "click" when the puzzle in a principal position. It is unclear why it does that, so it is a serendipitous surprise.

Watch the YouTube video.
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Read more at the Shapeways Forum.
Check out the photos below.

Enjoy!

Oskar

Holy moly, this looks great! It's funny how the center pieces stick out after a quarter turn - be careful with that, it could put someone's eye out!

Very nice. One of the prettiest puzzles I've ever seen. I actually thought of the Iron Cross when I saw it.

Amazing puzzle!!!

It would be even better if it were implemented 'traditional' void style. Like Centers are void, and the corners are not.

An octahedral shape mod should take care of this - Tony?

Wow, very cool! That first picture is decieving, though

-Doug

Very NICE!!!!

On first look I was thinking this was a Void Geared Mixup. But looking closer I see that isn't correct.



Above you see the gears are on the face centers and the edges and there are a total of 18 four tooth gears. This puzzle has a total of 24 four tooth gears.

I notice on version 3 of your Mixup Cube you added 24 spacers between the face centers and the edges. You can see what they look like here:



So is this in essence a Geared Mixup where the gears have been added to these spacers instead of the face centers and edges?

Or is there a reason why the gears could not be placed on the face centers and edges in this puzzle?

I notice the Geared Mixup is built up from a Fused Cube so it doesn't fit Bram's idea of a completely symmetrical mechanism as this puzzle does, and I'm curious if the staples mechanism is somehow dictating where the gears must be placed.

I also notice the Geared Mixup corners only have 6 teeth whereas the corners on this puzzle have 12. Interesting...

To me the scariest thing about this puzzle is all the tiny stickers and even the corner stickers which are the largest ones on the puzzle appear very fragile with the very thin segments connecting the bumps that cover the teeth. How did you get these applied so nicely? I assume you needed to use super glue?

Oh and you broke Bram's symmetry in the mechanism though I know that was by design to produce a more interesting puzzle. Still I think it might be interesting to make a version with solid corners which has the mechanism pieces cut off at the surface of a sphere. This would make the edges and face centers identical and hide any orientation information contained in the gears and restore the symmetry of the mechanism. It would make the corners easier to sticker and I'd just leave the other parts exposed but un-stickered. It would make a puzzle I could actually solve all while still being able to enjoy the beautiful mechanism. Just an idea...

Carl

I think I found a good way to think about this puzzle.

A Geared Mixup Cube is to a Mixup Cube what ...
this Maltese Gears is to a WitEden 3x3x3 Mixup Plus.

I'm still curious if a Geared Mixup Plus could be made where the gears were on the face centers and edges instead of the spacers. I'm guessing it was just an artistic choice to put them on the spacers in this case but I'm not sure.

Carl

Yes, from a puzzle solving perspective. No, from a mechanical-design perspective.Bram required the "staples" to be geared.Dexterity and close-up 20-20 vision.I use nail polish as primer, following Roxanne's advice. Superglue does not work that well for stickers.The puzzle mechanism in its solved state has all symmetries of a cube. It satisfies Bram's symmetry requirements, even though I did not shapemod the puzzle to a 2x2x2 (hiding the gears) as Bram suggested. Still, I do not believe that this concept could be applied to Big Chop.

Oskar

Because that is where he wanted them? Not because that is where his staple mechanism required them to be... correct?Nice tip!! Thanks Roxanne and Oskar.
I'd agree... and even if it did I don't see how it could jumble as a Big Chop should be able to. Are there any geared puzzles which do jumble at this stage? I'm not aware of any...

Carl

Mostly because I was suggesting having the staples and skipping the pieces between them completely. It's mechanically simpler to have the gears on the staples, but putting them on the intermediary pieces probably works too. If you were going for the Big Chop dropping out the smaller pieces would be a major feature.

Very interesting... Thanks for that insight Bram.

Oskar, Can I propose the following experiment? Can you reassemble the Maltese Cross without the face centers and edges in place and compare its functionality with its current state? I'm worried that skipping the pieces between the staples could have very detrimental consequences on the quality of the turning. The only way I know to find out is to try it... though maybe you already have and that is why they are there in the first place.

Thanks,
Carl

Carl,

The puzzle was glued together, so I cannot take it apart. However, I can tell you what will happen. The "staples" are thinner than the square centers/edges. So at a 45-degrees turn (slice turned by 22.5 degrees), the puzzle would fall apart. However, that aspect is not fundamental. I am sure that we can make it work without the square centers/edges by making the puzzle as a whole huge, while keeping the square center/edges small.

I still keep my doubts of doing this for Big Chop, because of
1) making the gears work across a 10-slice intersection, and
2) the jumbling of big chop.

Oskar

The last picture in the first post looks like a grand Twisty Puzzle fortress.

There are myriad technical problems with getting the staples mechanism to work on the big chop. Getting them to work across the 10-slice intersection isn't the worst of them - For that, you make each staple have two gears, and the two gears are connected to each other via a gear internal to the staple so that only one of them needs to be connected on either side at any time.

The lack of jumbling I don't think is a killer, just a variant. Speaking of which, has anybody ever made a geared helicopter cube?

^On that note, of the puzzles that have geometries that dictate both jumbling and non-jumbling moves, ave any been built with a mechanism that prevents the jumbling?

David Pitcher's Twisted-6.