These are photos of some new puzzles I've been designing this year. I'm working on more refined acrylic prototypes right now, but I thought some of you might enjoy seeing these test models in the meantime.

The puzzle is constructed from grooved tetrahedra strung together with magic-style filament hinges. But on tetrahedra, the hinges migrate 60 degrees.

The three puzzles pictured are constructed using 6, 10, and 12 tetrahedra.

This solid color scheme is analogous to coloring the 2 sides of a regular magic in solid colors. In other words... not that interesting. The solid colors will be replaced by puzzley patterns in the next round of protoypes.

I can upload a video of the Tetrex-10 to youtube if there is interest.

Wow!
That's a 3D Magic, Cool!
Vadim

WOW! Looks very impressive!

Please let us know when the video is ready!



Pantazis

These are beautiful! I would love to see the video. Thanks!

I would like to see a video too. Very nice

Here's a video, if everything works...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHQU28kfyn4

I don't really know many transformations yet, so this video is just me fiddling around on the first day it was built.

Cool! I'd like to see a video of that very much.

Thanks! Nice video. I like how it moves and how the tetrahedrons can migrate. Perhaps you could make them a little bigger though?

Thanks for the video!

It is an excellent idea to apply to tetrahedrons. From what I saw, each pair of tetrahedrons can move from one edge to a second edge. Because of its 3-d state it is impossible to move to a third edge, but then you brilliantly overcome this hurdle by connecting those edges with another (third) tetrahedron. And so on.

There are six edges on each tetrahedron, so there must be plenty of choices, but preferably it should be connected in some symmetric way, just like you did.

As I said, it is an excellent idea!



Pantazis

Aleksey-

Yes! It's a bit small. The acrylic prototype I'm making now has 2 inch edge lengths, very similar to the square magic tiles. I think this will improve stability significantly. More info on that as it develops.

Kastellorizo-

Thanks for the nice words! I'm a big fan of your amazing magic mods.

By the way, using this stringing pattern, if you link 2 tetrahedra together (let's say A and B), you can move A through a repeating cycle of four edges around B. If you add a third tet (let's say C), you have to move C out of the way before A can move twice, and I think that's what you saw. I should make a small example and post it...

My head is about to explode....

First the triangles, and pentagons....now 3-D !!

This is a good year for magic fans.

Between you and kastellorizo, I hope to see some more great ideas in the coming years. Great job!


Btw, any plans on using the same idea on cubes, or other polyhedrea?? I assume they have to be regular for the stringing to work but you have certainly opened up some new possibilities.

-Adam-

Hmm... what about cubes?

And what's the mechanism like for this, anyway? It looks relatively simple, but the pieces have a very complicated design.

Hi qqwref-
The mechanism is filament loops nestled in grooves, similar to a standard Rubik's magic. They probably look complicated because of the grooves.

By the way, I can confirm it works for cubes as well.

Yes, it can certainly work with cubes. I did some testing last year (sorry no pictures):

viewtopic.php?p=35578#35578

So now, this is double confirmed.

I also mentioned the tetrahedron part in the above link. Similarly, octahedrons should also work. Dodecahedrons and icosahedrons should work too, but making them will require a lot of mastery!



Going back to the cubes, just look at the image below (I hope you know the type, it is an easy puzzle/toy using cubes, but only one edge is connected at all times).



By creating cubes made of Rubik's tiles, making them rigid (so that their shape will never change), and then connecting different cubes to each other so that they can "jump" between two different edges, and then using a similar "connecting pattern" to the image above, could make a really cute puzzle!




Pantazis

Great thread! The discussion of pentagonal magics makes me curious about how you solved the stringing issue for your panta-flips...

And that is a fantastic connection pattern idea for solid cubes.

LOL It is was not easy, as I had dedicated a lot of time to "decode" the way it worked. It is another stringing technique which has its own "personality". And it is more complex than the one used by Rubik's.

Compared to the square magics, the pantaflips have advantages and disadvantages. And the main goal was the to enable polygons shapes with odd number of edges to reach all the other edges too. If that wasn't complex enough (the stringing is very difficult and tedious), a lot of care had to be taken to make sure that adding more than two tiles, will not restrict the movement of the previous ones!




Pantazis