After a year of part time work I finally have enough parts to build a complete puzzle. I had planned to make 3 or 4 puzzles, keeping one for myself and selling the rest. But I think building it is going to be much harder than it was making it!

So if anyone is interested I have enough parts for 3 or 4 puzzles. Just go to http://www.petaminx.net to order and to see pics.

Thanks!

jbc

This sounds interesting... Remember though it won't be that long before Cube4You release their own Petaminx.

Yeah they also removed the link from their website.

No offense but I think that the price you are asking is a little steep mentioning that the first Petaminx sold for $3500 and it was cleaned of flash, assembled and stickered.

It will probably help to give us a bit more background. Some bits of information that would really help would be:

1.) Which design is this? I presume Drewseph's initial free design, although he made some revisions so it would be good to be clear.
2.) How were masters printed? FDM (what res?), SLS, PolyJet, etc.
3.) What silicone was used for casting? (OOMOO 25, 30, MoldMax, Alumilite, etc.)
4.) What resin was used for the parts? (Alumilite black, Alumilite tan dyed black, Smoothcast Onyx, etc.)
5.) Pictures of your molds so we can see the lines

If you haven't build a working puzzle from the parts you will find it hard to get someone to shell out a lot on the hope that there are no problems. Only one really successful Petaminx was built from this design (assuming my guess is correct for #1) and that was Jason Smith's from PolyJet masters. Frank and Dave's was completed but based on FDM and the it wasn't ever really clear to me how well it functioned despite the awesome achievement of getting it cast and assembled. There were some problems with the center caps perhaps based on tolerances being a bit off.

If you cast parts for 3-4 Petaminxes you are certainly devoted and that is an achievement in and of it self! But give us some backstory so we know what it is you are really offering here. And after all that work you shouldn't stop now! Do the cleanup (yes, the hard part) and build at least one.

Dave

You bring up a lot of good points. Getting it to function correctly does seem a little tricky. As for your other questions.

1) Design: It's based on Drewseph's design but I'm using a 2 inch Styrofoam core with modified shorter center shafts. Attaching them is my biggest obstacle at this point.

2) Printing: FDM from Print to 3D

3) Casting: OOMOO 30

4) Resin: Smoothcast Onyx

5) Pics: I'll add them to my website

Once you get enough molds made to make a few hundred parts at a time it's not too difficult. But it's a whole new set of challenges to put it together. I'll get it done . . . someday.

Seeing on the picture, I'd much rather buy all the pieces in WSF from shapeways, because it costs less...

- Greg

WHOA!!! That is AWESOME!!!! I have been waiting forever for the petaminx to come out!!! Too bad I don't have enough money . Oh well, I hope your business goes well. BTW, if you are able to lower the price to 300 dollars (or a little more) I would definately buy it. It is just too expensive. Anyway, COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If this was mass produced using injection molds or something like that I'd say yes. But I put in up to $800.00 before I even got my first piece.

$170.00 Masters
$140 OOMOO
$76.00 Smoothcast Onyx
$250.00 - $500.00 Misc supplies

That doesn't even include the countless hours I've spent. I've covered 90% of the cost done 50% of the work and I'm only charging 1/3 the price, not a bad deal.

Is that $10.00 per piece for those WSF corner pieces? It would cost $200.00 just for the corners and another $200.00 for the large edges and another $1850.00 for the rest.

That's because the parts have not been optimized for printing at Shapeways. Properly designed, a full Shapeways print would definitely be cheaper. Still, people usually prefer cast over printed puzzles.

Frankly, I think you should assemble at least one puzzle before you try to sell any kits. I don't think many people would want to buy in to this not knowing whether the puzzle would actually work.

WSF prints at around $1.50 per cubic centimetre. So how big would your Petaminx be!

These parts are clearly based on my design. in fact I'd say they are my original parts.

The fact that you are using a STYROFOAM core is terrifying. how do you plan to attach these centers and keep them anchored in place?

last but not least, I never gave anyone permission to sell my design without first contacting me. and I will be blunt. the quality of these pieces look shameful. These are nowhere near good enough to yield a working puzzle.

I am sorry for all the time you invested, but you should have contacted me before you started. The masters seem to clearly be FDM, and I can say from experience that you need to have polyjet or better in or better to get a working cast.

I advise anyone seeing this to not purchase this puzzle until he has proof that a stable working puzzle can be assembled.

I've tried clicking on the www.petaminx.net line and it doesn't work. What happened?

I would listen to Drewseph's advice. It sounds like Petaminxnet did much work, got in over his head, and now is trying to bail out by selling his project to someone else. We should see proof that your petaminx parts work. I have worked with styrofoam (non-puzzle sculpture project) before and cannot fathom using it for anything more complex than perhaps a giant rubik's cube. Even so, this material is an extremely brittle meduim. If you rub two pieces together (or against almost any other material) it will chafe and generate static electricity. Any lube that contains petroleum distillates will probably melt it. Can't see how you expect to build a core off of it.

As for the url, it appears to be a domain name Hijack. Bummer when that happens. Double bummer that Google's cache of this site doesn't seem to work either

Site should be back up later today, forgot to renew.

As for the core I've been working with a 2" plastic ball with a foam core. Plastic on styrofoam isn't bad but plastic on plastic is much better but styrofoam is a good anchor.

As for the puzzle, I just finished another side and it looks better and moves better then the first one I did. I think I'll need to take the first one i did a part and work on it some more, it has some of the older parts in it, not as good as the newer ones, and the blurred iPhone pictures don't help much I guess.

BTW I never meant this to be the end all be all kit to build a petaminx, you can use anything you want as the core, I just thought I'd pass on some of my spare parts.

A core from any dodecahedron should do if you get the right length screws. I believe you can buy cores individually (Gigaminx or Teraminx had orange cores sold separate at one point bug c4u's parts page is down right now...), but worst case you can buy a cheap Chinaminx and use its core.

Dave

Ok I will put this as nicely as I can, with there teraminx out the petaminx isnt far and people arent willing to pay as much esspecially unless they see a near perfect working model. Next you are using a sytrafoam ball core, if standard cores can ware a styrafoam ball core will be crap, you need a real core not styrafoam because that is just cheap and wont ever work to pull off a decent puzzle

I think unless and until the Teraminx makes back its money it is quite unclear if we will ever see a production Petaminx. I have no idea the cost to manufacture it or how many units it has sold but would not assume that, just because our little community loves it, it was a success or failure. It is very easy to talk about producing a Petaminx but it is another thing entirely to spend the money to do so. Until I see more, I wouldn't jump to the conclusion one is forthcoming.
Be fair, he just explained above you don't need to use his core, he was just offering. I think that part of his offer is not much of a factor given how simple and cheap it is to replace with something proper if you deem styrofoam inappropriate (I wouldn't ever use it myself).

I can't say I am in the market at those prices but I have to respect the work that has gone into his project and hope to see an example of the pieces when he has time (and don't expect this soon, it is a lot of work!).

Good luck petaminxnet

Dave

I'm glad someone seems to understand, anyway I have 5 sides sanded and assembled.

- Petaminxnet