Hi Twisty Puzzles fans,

Geared Mixup is a twisty-puzzle design requested by many people. When playing the original Gear Cube (Caution Cube), players can only make half turns because of the gears. Many people tried quarter turns in vain. Now it is possible, by combining the Gear Cube and Mixup Cube concepts. Geared Mixup has eight geared corners that drive twenty small 4-teeth gears.

Watch the YouTube video.
Buy the puzzle from my Shapeways Shop.
Read more at the Shapeways Forum.
Check out the photos below.

Enjoy!

Oskar

Let me be the first to say WOW!

Were the "dots" a necessity of the design?

Oh! WOW!!!

WOOHOO I've been waiting for this for so long!!! I love it, please mass produced it!!!

- Greg

Brilliant! I believe one of the amazing features of this puzzle is '
the fact that it mixes up the edges *with* the centers.

Now let's mix up the corners too with the edges and the centers!
(A puzzle type of globalization LOL)




Pantazis

Wow, I'd love for this to be mass-produced. I remember when I took my Gear Cube to school and people were desperately trying to do quarter turns; this would make it a lot simpler!

Alex

This is a must have! I hope this will be mass produces soon =)

Oskar, congrats on finally prototyping this.

Jared, I believe the "dots" are required to engage the gears during mid turn.

I watched the video; the puzzle looks like it'd be one heck of a beast to solve. It seems so fragile though!

Oskar, that is so pretty! And within my limits too

Now where do I get the stickers?

Oskar and I are both loyal customers of Dr. Sticker so for any of our puzzles, you should be able to get stickers from him at www.dr-sticker.com (just ask, he should have the template already).

Me too!!! If its not mass produced soon I'll grab one off shapeways.

I see 6 face center gears and 12 edge gears... where are the other 2?

Carl

Beautiful work......AGAIN! Because you make so many beautiful puzzles in a years time, you (like Tony) must be Uwe's right hand man.


Chris


Can we expect to see this mass produced or is it too similar to the gear cube?


PS- I CANNOT WAIT FOR THE GEAR SKEWB!

Another master piece! amazing!

About the gear skewb, isn't it actually a gear Master skewb?

Thank you all for your nice words.You can send this link to Dr. Sticker to order the stickers. You can also order a fully assembled and stickered puzzle from me.That decision is not up to me. I would not expect so, as it is a bit too exotic, I feel.

Oskar

Great puzzle Oskar! Now how long is it till you make a gear cube with 45 degree rotations?

Sorry for being unclear - what I meant was, why do they have to be separated like that? If the teeth were smaller, would the puzzle not work as well?

Either way, it's a brilliant design.

No, the teeth cannot be smaller, as they would skip. The consequence is indeed these loose dots. They are another argument against mass production, as they are at an angle with each other and do not come out of the mould.

Oskar

Maybe they could be made as pegs and stuck in?

I hope you're rich... cause I'm getting really poor.

Genious.

Incredible! Well done! I've been wanting to see it for a long time, and now that it's made it looks so cool! Well done!

Amazing!

Now let's see the Mixup Gear Anisotropic Cube!

simply wonderful and I agree with portal1920.Anisotropic mixup cube would be great too.

Just buy a Geared Mixup and remove some gears!

Some analysis may be needed. For Gear Cube --> Anisotropic Cube, it was obvious which gears should be removed. Which gears should be removed to make the most interesting anisotropic version of Geared Mixup?

Oskar

I would say the most interesting Anisotropic version would be two edges on one side of the cube and then two more on the opposite side of the puzzle, turned 90 degrees in relation to the first two.

So looking at the first picture, say the Green-Yellow, Green-White, Blue-Red, and Blue-Orange edges.


Edit3: Making just one edge Anisotropic would produce the most interesting variation.

I believe that creating an Anisotropic edge would be quite difficult considering that the edge would have a fixed unrotatable shape. This would likely cause problems once that said edge has been translated to a center position: It would likely bind up if a second translation were attempted at a right angle.

Alfred,

If you just remove one or more of the gears, why wouldn't that work?

Oskar

Hmmm, I was thinking about the way the Anisotropic edges act as a necessary spacer to hold everything in place. If you removed some of the edges, the cube would fall apart, wouldn't it?

Except I wasn't thinking about the fact there is a solid edge part beneath each gear. I've just answered my own question.

I'd imagine that for an Anisotropic design to work, all of the gears along an entire plane would need to be removed. Just removing one or two gears, the faces would still be required to rotate in tandem. But since 90 degree rotations are possible on the geared mixup, the Anisotropic plane is broken when the cube is rotated 90 degrees perpendicular to it. The Anisotropic effect would then be lost until the entire plane of eight missing gears is restored. I liken this to a cubic 3x3x5, whose outer layers can only be twisted when the entire face is oriented properly. In the majority of configurations, this special move would be blocked, however the mixup cube has such odd mechanics to begin with, so even with all of the gears intact, 90 degree rotations are already possible, so the cube has Anisotropic characteristics (please excuse the pun) "right out of the box", no special modifications needed