I've had a rough version of this kicking about for a while. Due to other projects, this has sat on the back burner. I have tidied it up somewhat, although I think you'll agree, more work is still needed:







It turns reasonably, but probably needs lubing. I know from the earlier version that the textured surface can get dirty quite easily, so I hope to spray it with clear acrylic to protect the surface.

Looks nice
sort of like a cheese but different shape

Wow, a spiral, what a great idea! I like the textured look, too. I think it fits the "organic" shape. I'd love to hear more about how it was designed. Any golden ratios on this one?

Brilliant idea and design. It could use a little touching up as you mentioned, but WOW. I really like this

Wow, that's really cool! Reminds me of a square-1, or a bandaged 3-layer UFO. Very original.

Nice one

Have you cast your own mechanism?

Oh wow. Just... wow.

Excellent job! I disagree though, as I think it looks magnificent. I love the idea.

Bravo!
I wasn't expecting to wake up to that

Very innovative!
And beautiful!
I like puzzles in rainbow colours like the masterball or the triamant.
This one would make a nice addition to my collection.

Is it made from a masterball?

I that three layers, with widths going from one through seven?

I love this so much. I think I'm seeing a pattern here of me loving puzzles that resemble organic shapes. Really nice job...

that looks very nice

Fantastic mod!
Was it printed?
Vadim

Obviously. You can see the tell-tale FDM artifacts.

That is lovely and I agree with Georges, it would make a nice addition to my collection

Are the angles on the wedges all in an arithmetic progression or are they fudged a bit? It looks to me like in the first picture, the purple-red-orange-yellow part should be able to turn, but if the angles are all just multiples of that of the red piece then this should not be the case.

(Also, how on earth did you come up with a central mechanism that lets you turn from any valid cut?)

Beautiful puzzle!


Say the red pieces is 1 unit... then the total would be 28. That would make the purple-red-orange-yellow section 13 units instead of 14 like it should be. The orange-yellow-green-blue section also looks like it should be able to turn. It's 14 units, so I guess so. I would assume that either everything isn't a multiple of the red piece or the angles are fudged a bit.

Are you planning to sell these? I would also like to have one in *MY* collection.

Though I know I'll be outbid if this is auctioned, I suppose I'll throw my name into the hat and say this would look great in MY collection.

It looks excellent! It's so original, I love it

It's extremely pretty, but I don't really get how it turns. What's the ratio between the pieces? Since it's not all the same (or even similar) I imagine this would be very hard to solve, on the level of the trickiest bandaged puzzles I know.

My dad (i.e. Poseidon) is very proud of you making this design!




Pantazis


PS. this puzzle does not use the golden ratio number, but soon some puzzles will!

the difference in angles must make it really hard to solve. I love the shape. And after taking a closer look I see it has 3 layers, which is also amazing

I folks, thanks for the nice comments.



Sort of and yes.

I puzzled for weeks over this. I started with the idea of a geometric progression, but it proved impossible (for me at least) to find one with enough 180 degree cut combinations. It then occured to me that the triangle number for 8 was 36, giving 8 pieces in an arithmetic progression with a=d=10 degrees. I knew that the ten degree piece would be small, but 3D printed anyway. The 10 degree pieces indeed turned out to be way too fragile, which was a pity because the combinations of sizes was great. I fudged in the end and added 10 degrees to the 80 degree piece so that the progression is 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 90 degrees. I think it still looks ok to the eye though. Still, having 7 colours fitted nicely with the "rainbow" idea!

[Edit: sorry picked up wrong quote first time round!)

I suspect you meant are these directly printed pieces? They are all actually cast from FDM pieces. 23 separate silicone moulds!

Sorry to disappoint on the mechanism front. It is just a miniturised square-1 type rail mech; only one cut on the middle slice. However, I think it will be a tough one to solve: so many unique combinations. Anyone got any ideas how it might be done?

As far as a solution, I'm not quite sure if there are even enough ways to scramble it for one to not just be able to memorize the positions. There are only 4 configurations from the solved position that allow you to make a turn through the middle. From there, I can't really tell without having a physical puzzle or sitting down and really thinking about it. Perhaps tomorrow I will try to work out a solution.

There are a surprisingly large number of ways it can be muddled. It very quickly gets very scrambled and confusing! Remember, each angled piece has another the same size (but opposite rotation) which it can be muddled with. It gets very hard to see how to return pieces "home"!

Well, there are 14 pieces and half are indistinguishable so even if any piece could be made to go in any position, you would have "only" 14!/2=43,589,145,600 positions (I suppose multiply by 2 for the middle layer, but that is trivial). I suspect the number is quite less, but still far more positions than I had originally suspected. I still plan on working on a solution, though.

It has three layers, it looks like, not two.

Does the middle layer twist, though? If it's like a square-1, then solving the middle layer is trivial.

That is disappointing, I thought these were the actual prints and you were still going to smooth them. You should have spent some time on smoothing the masters.

As has been mentioned, I like the rough appearance - it makes it look organic, fitting the design.

Would the fragility of a 10-degree piece persist if the puzzle were spherical or cylindrical?

(And about the middle slice - because it doesn't get as complex as the rest of the puzzle, I'd suggest making it a different color - if it didn't clash so much with the shape's theme, that is. If you were to make a non-organic shaped version of the puzzle, a black band around the middle would look very nice IMO.)

I was in two minds as to "do I smooth or not". It would not be a tremendous job to sand the masters and re-cast, and I may do this at some point. However,

(1) Once sanded, masters remain sanded, so I would not be able to created a "textured" version.
(2) I like the idea of an organic shape and an organic texture. This puzzle has a really nice warm feel, not unlike holding a real shell as opposed to a clinical smooth feel of a normal puzzle. (unfortunately the "grain" of the artifacts on the centres does not match the grain on the outer pieces. These need to be reprinted with a matching grain.)

Clearly the comments here indicate opinion is divided!

Sorry, this must have been posted just before I started the last reply.

The answer is I am not sure, but I think the puzzle would be strong enough. It would allow the internal mech to be larger: that is the main cause of problems. I think a flattened ellipsoid would make a more interesting and pleasing shape than a sphere. The mathematical completenes of 8 pieces with angles in an arithmetic progression would be very nice. However, of course the puzzle would lose alot of difficulty, as the top and bottom pieces would be the same (no spiral to distinguish them. I suppose it could be "bumped").

There are loads of possible variations, and I always find it really difficult picking between them when making a puzzle!

If the puzzle were a cube or cuboid, and the angles for the cuts were chosen just right, then the uniqueness to each piece could be restored due to the angles of the outer edges. (But that might compromise the stability of the 10-degree piece, if you decided to put it back in...)

In any case, do you have any plans to produce any more of this puzzle?

That is one beautiful puzzle - well done.

Bandaged puzzles in general tend to be extremely difficult. Maximum difficulty is achieved when there's between 2 and 3 available moves per position. For example, the Unscrambled puzzle is 11 pieces with an expected 2.75 available moves per position. Despite the small number of pieces, it's more like cryptography than a puzzle.