Hey guys,
I'm currently working on my first custom puzzle build (a cross cube). I've hit about 3 snags along the way that have forced me to go back to the drawing board and remodel my mechanism design. Do any of you expert puzzle builders have pictures or stories of puzzles you've made that just didn't quite work? or puzzles that you had to go back and recalibrate in order to make work.

I feel like it would be a great inspiration to people like myself, just starting to make custom puzzles, to know that even the experts have had issues creating some of these fabulous new puzzles that you see.

Max

I've failed 3 puzzles so far, back when I was learning design with autocad (big mistake to use that software):

Mini Master Skewb
Elite Skewb
Skewb + 3x3

There's not much to say about it because they were all mechanisms with too small hooks and no real though behind them, as for the skewb + 3x3 i did think hard but I didn't realise the skewb corners had nothing to hold onto... ^^

Would you believe I have been thinking of starting a thread like this for years? The reason I haven't though is I am simply not sure how comfortable I am admitting (to myself I guess) how many puzzles don't work out. Recently going through some boxes I found an awful lot of them. I have had some great fun cutting puzzles down to extreme depths not knowing if the thing would stay together or not.
Still not comfortable enough to reveal any though.

Here is an example where I detailed a design change of the Duominx, how I adjusted for it, and later the final revised design.
Here is a thread about repairing poorly printed 3D parts.
My largest failure was here where a batch of Neons were mis-cut. This led to the DIY (sold out).

Last but not least, here is my Neon building thread, my four+ year extended journey on the Elemental design. You will find many failures described there. I have consistently improved the design over the course of building about 150 of Elementals (mostly Neons, Neon #100 was just cut last night!). Even as of Neon #99 I made a major improvement (pictures here and here) to the packaging inserts to reduce potential shipping damage that I noticed happened on occasion. It took me a long time to figure out what was causing it, but some very nice feedback from a customer helped.

Dave