You probably clicked on this post with hopes of seeing a 13x13. All you're gonna see is the failed work of me and mindstormscreator(Alex). When we were 13 (2 years ago), we decided to spend all of summer building a 13x13. Now at the time, the biggest known cube was the 12x12, so this would have been a world record. Me and Alex have had much success with smaller puzzles, like his 1x2x7, and my master grimaces, and a large variety of other casted puzzles. Well you see, at the time there was the 3d printing revolution. Casting became less and less used. Therefore, we decided to go against society, and cast the thing. It started pretty well actually. We had planned to do one mold a week. I make one mold, and Alex would cast every piece for it. We were gonna cast it in onyx, which for those of you who don't know, it's a casting resin that cures black, and it the toughest on the market. I made the molds out of mold max 30, which you mix at a 1:10 weight scale ratio. The stuff takes 24 hours to cure and is practically inadvisable. It started okay. We managed to finish all 8 corners in one week. There was somewhere around 1000 pieces needed. Then we started the wings. And we continued the wings. Now 2 years later, we're still casting wings. Actually we stopped trying a while back. We just lost the motivation, and depleted our resources. $150 didn't get us far. But I must say, It was a great learning experience. First off, I should stick with casting smaller puzzles. Actually I should have just joined the shapeways revolution. I also learned that linear mechanism only works to a certain extent. I also learned most of what I know about designing in the process. I would like to remind you that this fail is just as much Alex's fail as it is mine. Sorry for the huge paragraph. I have pictures, but they're not uploading

Thanks for sharing your experience.
Even though the end result didn't work out for you (it was pretty ambitious!), it is good to post about attempts (I did once here. It is great for people to understand that puzzle building isn't easy, but your persistence is great.

Don't think of it as a failure, think of it as a great learning experience. I'm sure you learned a lot about casting, printing, etc. and it will make your next puzzle that much better.

Share some pictures if you can, and also some details about all the work that came before casting (CAD, printing masters, finishing masters, making the molds, etc.)

Dave

Matt-
This is a great story. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Matt-
MAKE AN EXAMINX VIDEO OR I AM GONNA EXPLODE!!!

It looks like you're just gonna have to explode. Sorry.

why will he/she have to explode.

He/she will have to explode because I'm not going to make an examinx video until after U.S. Nationals.

Why?
And also, I'm a dude lol

Hey everyone...

I find it funny how we didn't even reveal that we tried this until now... we have literally not worked on it for a year or so.

Also, haven't posted here in a while...