I finished off a few more projects this weekend. I finally got myself another Square-1 to complete the Square-1 pair of mods:



I'm proud. There are a bunch more pics and info on TwistyPuzzles.com if anyone wants it:

Dodecagonal Prism: http://twistypuzzles.com/cgi-bin/fs.cgi?str=puzzle.cgi?pid=502
Star Prism: http://www.twistypuzzles.com/cgi-bin/fs.cgi?str=puzzle.cgi?pid=625

My wife found an official 2x2x2 in a thrift store for 30 cents. The mechanism was kinda rough, so I checked around in the database to see what could be done with a 2x2x2. Voila:



As always, there are some more pics info here: http://www.twistypuzzles.com/cgi-bin/fs.cgi?str=puzzle.cgi?pid=474

Sandy

TQ 4 the great pics and inspiration, shall try my hand at a few of those, they do sell tonnes of Square-1 in my place at Toys R Us ~US$7.50 each, I think it would be it little wasteful to buy a handful for plain mod but what the heck, after seeing the amazing results
How many SQ1 do you actually need for making the pair of mods Sandy?
I mean the cylinder and star, any wasted parts unused or leftovers OR do they balance out nicely after finishing the two, sorry, lazy to read back the previous posts for details

If you buy three Square 1 Puzzles you can make one Dodecagonal Prism and two Star Prisms, and have no spare pieces remaining. You need three to obtain the 24 edge pieces required for the Dodecagonal Prism which leaves 24 corner pieces for the two Star Prisms. (12 per Star). Obviously the three centre layers all get used.
You can of course, if you wish, buy one Square 1 and transform/half the eight corners into 16 egde shaped pieces to make a Dodecagonal Prism, however this does take quite a bit of time.
(If you are interested there are photos of the ones I made of Waynes 'Wanted Site'.)

I love the rounded corners on the stickers. Very classy look. Nice choice of colors, too.

Great ideas and even better execution! They look awesome. I also like the stairs one, its only a matter of time now for someone to use 5x5x5s to make a very long stairs puzzle lol.

later
Gabe

Both of them!

Do the Square1 based puzzles use the original Square1 internal mechanism? Is the middle section of the Dodecagonal Prism able to twist on all 6 "slices", and the Star Prism on all 3?

3 SQ1 is only if I don't mess up the first time shaping corners/edges etc. for them...hehehe
Anyway, nice info, shall get 6 of them and try something when time allows, THX!!

Yep, three... but rather than making 2 Star Prisms, I'd suggest making 1 Star Prism, 1 Dodecagonal Prism, and one 2-Layered Star Prism. If anyone has any friggin clue how to make this thing (other than using the UFO Mechanism!), please respond!



(Pictures from http://www.puzzle-shop.de.)

This also leaves you more extra plastic to reshape the middle slices for the other two puzzles.

Sandy

Yes, they both use the original Square-1 mechanism. Therefore, only a single vertical cut exists. If the puzzles DIDN'T rely on this mechanism, the middle layers would likely have a height equal to the other two layers and the end results would be more attractive.

I can visualize a way to create a fully working 3-layered Star Prism, but it wouldn't be easy to implement. I may never get around to attempting it as there are so many other projects on the list.

Sandy

You won't need six unless you're a complete non-talent with tools. First off, you don't have to reshape any of the wedges. You only have to reshape two middle slices per puzzle. You'll have two left over... one of each of the two different sides. So you can screw up one of each without needing another Square-1.

Reshaping the middle slices for the Star Prism is just a matter of adding on 2 90 degrees corners per slice. You can use your extra middle slices to create those if you want. They'll be the perfect shapes, and you'll have just enough of them.

Reshaping the middle slices for the Dodecagonal Prism is similarly easy, as all you have to do is cut down the pieces approximately right, then create 10 "mini caps" out of the 6 caps you took off the middle slices of the Square-1s.

In both these mods, there is room for error and rebuilding if you cut down too far, as the part of the puzzle you're reshaping will be hidden when the puzzle is complete.

If you do end up needing extra middle slices, and therefore end up with a bunch of extra wedge pieces, let me know, cause I wouldn't mind getting my hands on another 6 of the large wedge pieces.

Good luck!

Sandy

I tried, and i couldnt finish the last step, didnt have the ability to do it back then. Now i probably could.
Ok first of all, lets get this straight now,
a 3 piece section of this puzzle is bandaged (yes, it just turns out that way). There only is one cut!

You must cut the turning plane off of a square one and glue them back to back. Now you will have a 2 layered square one. Put all the pieces on, and glue one on to the mech. The part that is hard is getting these 2 halves (and you will see what i mean when you do it...) to rotate on eachother as there is no room (hardly) to work with to build an axle. This is what i couldnt do.
Good Luck!
(send me some mid-assy pics so i can see if you are doing it right!) I have a post way back about this, about the time Wynn Walker was making these neat little guys. Took me 2 weeks to figure out the mechanism

Tylers right, tricky putting it together again but it is possible.
I have made both a two layered Star Prism and a two layered Square 1 from Square 1's, the two layered Dodecagonal Prism is to follow sometime. (you can see my two layered Square 1 on Waynes Wanted Site).
Because you are using the Square 1 mechanism there is only the one vertical axis, it does not rotate on every axis as does the UFO.
The reason for having to fix (glue) some pieces to the inner mechanism is because if you do not (which would be the preffered idea) when you are rotating the two layers the inner mechanism will tend to slightly rotate as well and will not line up with the vertical axis (you can't see this) and will therefore jamb the puzzle. You therefore have to fix some pieces to the inner mechanism to keep it in line. This in effect bandages one quarter of the puzzle. This still results in a puzzle that can be mixed up sufficiently to form a nice problem/solution.
I tried, when constructing my first two layer versions, to hold the mechanism in place, while rotating the layers, using ball bearings and (various strength) springs built into the inner mechanism but nothing worked 100% unfortunatly.